


fight like girls for our place at the table

by napricot



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bucky Barnes' Attempts at Being a Wingman, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Double Dating, F/F, First Time, M/M, POV Sharon Carter (Marvel), Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Slow Burn, Surveillance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-23 05:00:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 52,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16612391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/napricot/pseuds/napricot
Summary: “Am I on Cap watch because of who my aunt is?” Sharon asks Fury point-blank the second she sits in his office.“That’s part of the reason, yeah,” Fury says. Sharon narrows her eyes at him, and opens her mouth to object. “But not all of the reason. This isn’t a demotion.”“It sure feels like a demotion. You’re taking me out of the field and out of intel analysis to babysit Captain America.”How Sharon Carter gets her groove back, fucks up some Nazis, and gets the girl, with unasked for assists from a super soldier couple.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The National's "The Geese of Beverly Road."
> 
> This fic is complete and will be posted over the next week or so, I just need to give the last third of it a proper edit.

“Am I on Cap watch because of who my aunt is?” Sharon asks Fury point-blank the second she sits in his office.

“That’s part of the reason, yeah,” Fury says. Sharon narrows her eyes at him, and opens her mouth to object. “But not all of the reason. This isn’t a demotion.”

“It sure feels like a demotion. You’re taking me out of the field and out of intel analysis to babysit Captain America.” Sharon does her best to use an even, emotionless tone so she doesn't sound like a whiny child, and she thinks she’s succeeded. Mostly.

“It’s not just babysitting, it’s a protection detail.”

“He’s Captain America, he can protect himself.”

He’d managed an alien invasion like a week after he was defrosted, Sharon’s pretty sure he’ll do just fine against Russian spies or whatever the hell Fury’s worried about. Washington DC’s just not that dangerous, not compared to the European front or a battle with aliens.

“Carter—Sharon—I need someone I trust on his protection and surveillance detail. If it were up to me, I’d leave the guy alone. You’re right, he can handle himself. But this is pressure from the World Security Council and the Pentagon. Cap’s a valuable asset, and he’s still adjusting. No one wants to take any chances.”

Ugh, so it’s politics. But if someone’s going to be on Cap watch, it might as well be her. For Aunt Peggy’s sake, if nothing else. At least Sharon has some idea of who Steve Rogers is, and she’s not some Cap groupie or someone who just sees him as a supersoldier asset. Which is exactly what Fury wants, and probably part of why Fury picked her. _Dammit._

“There have to be other agents you trust,” she tries.

“There are. I’d use Romanoff for this if she wasn’t with the Avengers Initiative already.”

“I heard Agent May wanted out of the field, this could be great for her.”

“Nice try. I need May where she is.”

“Seriously, Director Fury. Why me?” She suspects she knows the answer, but she wants Fury to say it.

“You’re a pretty young blonde woman, and your cover job is a nurse.”

Sharon frowns. What does being a nurse have to do with—oh. Sarah Rogers was a nurse. Sharon sits back, a little impressed, and more than a little pissed off. On her own behalf, and on Rogers’. “Oh, we’re going full Oedipal then.”

Fury snorts. “You’re not on a honey pot op, for god’s sake. I’m just trying to push every advantage we’ve got. I need Rogers to not be a suspicious asshole about this and cause me even more problems, and I also need him to not get kidnapped or ambushed by the media. You can help with that, even if your cover is blown.”

“That’s where me being Peggy Carter’s niece kicks in,” realizes Sharon, running through the scenario already. There are other young, attractive and blonde SHIELD agents, and hair dye and wigs exist. But none of them would be able to say _I understand how you must feel right now, but I’m here to protect you. My great aunt is Peggy Carter, and I grew up hearing so much about Steve Rogers…._

Fury nods.

Sharon gets it. She knows what her name means, and she knows what she looks like: harmless and sweet, like the girl next door. At least, she does until you get a look at what her last ex-boyfriend had called her “dead shark eyes.” _Can you not, like, glare at me with your dead shark eyes? It’s creepy. You’re gorgeous, babe, but, uh...oh my god, stop that!_

Her looks have gotten her more than one undercover assignment, but every one has rankled. It rankled at the Academy when guys sneered at her or hit on her, and it rankled when her coworkers underestimated her, and it’s rankling now, being chosen for a job based on her looks and her family connections. Sharon’s worked damn hard to get where she is.

But this is for Steve Rogers, and Nick Fury is asking her.

So she shoves her anger down and says, “I understand. What do I do while he’s at the Triskelion or on a mission?”

“You’re off-shift while he’s at the Triskelion, his security’s covered there. And when he’s on mission or you’ve got downtime, I want you on analysis on any threats against Rogers. You might even be able to go out in the field when Rogers is away on missions or training exercises.” He slides a folder across his desk at her: the details of her cover, the mission parameters. “When you do need to come in, you’ll be working out of SHIELD’s Arlington office.”

She looks at the folder. Fury’s right, it’s not exactly a demotion. It’s not precisely where Sharon wants to be in her career, but it’s not a _demotion_. And it’ll be short term, right? She flips through the file, doesn’t see anything about mission duration.

“How long is this assignment likely to last?”

Fury sighs. “However long it takes me to convince the Pentagon and the Council that an undercover detail for Rogers isn’t necessary.” The way Fury’s mouth is pressed in a thin line communicates just what he thinks about his chances.

Sharon’s stomach sinks. “Oh god, I’m gonna be on this detail forever.”

* * *

Sharon has a couple weeks before Rogers transfers to DC, so she has more than enough time to get her cover set up and move into the apartment across the hall. As undercover assignments go, this one is pretty easy. Most of the potential threats against Rogers are low priority: some nutjobs, some espionage, some terrorists. Mostly she’ll just be making sure no one can kidnap Rogers for nefarious, making-a-new-supersoldier reasons. Sharon suspects the bulk of the mission will be subtly warning off reporters and invasively curious strangers.

The most exciting thing about the mission so far is the private briefing from Natasha Romanoff. It shows up in her calendar one morning, along with a bland email from Romanoff: _need to discuss some Delta Team logistics with you and how that works with your detail_. Sharon sends an equally bland email back: _sure, see you at 2_.

_Be cool, Carter_ , she tells herself firmly. _Be professional_.

Sharon, like just about every other SHIELD agent, is professionally intimidated by Romanoff while also having a massive crush on her. Alright, she’s probably projecting about the crush thing. Maybe it’s just Sharon who has to mentally chant to herself _dead shark eyes, dead shark eyes_ to keep from doing something horribly embarrassing like, god, twirling her hair around her finger or smiling at Romanoff in a flirty way.

Though hell, Sharon doesn’t know why she bothers. It’s not like women ever notice she’s flirting with them. Sharon always manages to pick the ones so straight they think Sharon wants to be their new bestie. It had happened like three times in college. Somehow, it had happened once on _OK Cupid_. Who goes on OK Cupid to find a friend? Ugh.

When she meets Romanoff in one of the smaller conference rooms at the Triskelion, Sharon greets her with a (brisk, professional) smile and a (brisk, firm) handshake.

“Nice to see you again, Agent Carter,” says Romanoff.

“You as well, Agent Romanoff.” _Yes, good, very professional_. Sharon wills herself not to blush.

“Thanks for meeting with me, I just wanted to go over a few things, make sure we don’t step on each other’s toes while Rogers works out of the Triskelion.”

“Of course.”

They go over some nuts-and-bolts logistics of how her surveillance detail will work with Delta Team’s schedule and missions. Romanoff gives her a quick briefing on Rogers too, what he does in his free time, his usual routines. It’s kind of...grim.

“So, morning run, work, evening gym, and then he stays home?”

Romanoff nods, mouth twisting. “Yeah. Says he’s still catching up on everything he missed, so he’s reading, watching stuff, you know.”

“He doesn’t go out?”

“He likes to people watch in cafes, parks, that kind of thing. He goes out to museums sometimes, does some exploring the city.”

“Got it.” It sounds lonely as hell.

“Yeah,” sighs Romanoff. “I know how depressing that all sounds.” She gives Sharon a wry, sad smile. “It’s—he’s grieving, we’re trying to be...sensitive, I guess. Give him time. Makes me feel a little better about my personal life, though.” Her smile turns tentative, and she rolls her eyes at herself.

“Right?” says Sharon. “People call me a workaholic, too.”

Romanoff tilts her head, smiles just a little. “What do you do? Outside of work?”

“Go out with friends, you know, nothing special. Dinner and drinks, that kind of thing. I like concerts, dancing.”

Shit, Sharon’s blushing now, she knows it. Romanoff’s smile gets bigger, and now Sharon is _definitely_ blushing, a lot, judging by the heat on her face.

“I like dancing too,” says Romanoff, her voice rough and warm.

For a second, Sharon vividly imagines dancing with Romanoff: hot and sweaty in a club, maybe, music thumping and bodies jumping and shouting around them. Or no, maybe Romanoff is a salsa club kind of woman, or, hell, lindy hop, god she’d look so great in—Romanoff interrupts her fantasy.

“Listen, thank you for taking this assignment. I know it’s not your ideal career move, but speaking as Steve’s teammate, I’m glad you’re on his detail.”

Sharon manages to say, “Yeah, of course. It’s my honor, Agent Romanoff.” Sharon fights off a wince. _Your honor? What the fuck, what is wrong with you, Carter._

“Call me Natasha. Here, let me give you my number, in case anything happens while you’re on Steve’s detail, or...anything else.”

Sharon slides her phone across the table to Natasha. “Sure, of course. Um, call me Sharon.”

Now Natasha smiles big enough to show her dimples. Sharon smiles back, and oh, wow, it’s been a while since she’s had that warm, top-of-the-rollercoaster flutter in her stomach. Of course, she can’t do anything about it, not now. _Professional, be professional_ , she reminds herself. Still, it’s nice.

* * *

“So the grapevine tells me congratulations are in order! I hear you got a new assignment direct from Fury.”

Sharon smiles even as she rolls her eyes. She can’t not smile when she talks to Trip, even when he’s calling from a crappy satphone connection in the middle of nowhere.

“What the hell are clearance levels for if the grapevine works that fast?”

Trip makes a dismissive noise. “You’re just jealous I got to Level 6 before you.”

“Please. You had a head start.”

It’s an old and comfortable argument. Trip went through the SHIELD Academy a couple years ahead of her, the only other Howling Commando legacy at the time, and while they kept their legacy status quiet from their classmates, they maintained a friendly competition.

“Yeah, yeah, so you always say. Seriously though, I got a memo about your assignment, so I don’t accidentally blow your cover. Long-term undercover assignment out in the field, just like you wanted, huh? I’m happy for you, Sharon.”

“Thanks, Trip.” She hesitates. When he puts it like that, it _is_ what she’s wanted. More responsibility, more long-term, more independence. Shit, maybe she’d been a brat, calling it babysitting duty. “Pretty sure I only got it because of the Aunt Peggy factor, though,” she admits quietly.

“Maybe, maybe not. Who cares how you got it? You’re there, you can prove yourself. Neither of us got to Level 6 because we kept namedropping Grandpa Gabe and Aunt Peggy. We did the damn work.”

“Damn right we did. Speaking of the world, how’s your assignment going? You seen Mack lately? There’s still a pool going on whatever’s up with him and Bobbi…”

They exchange mostly unclassified SHIELD gossip until Tripp has to get back to work, and Sharon ends the call feeling good about her upcoming assignment. Tripp’s right: even if this assignment is just babysitting, she can still prove herself, she can still do the work well. She can do right by Rogers and keep Fury’s trust, and then, hopefully, she can move on to bigger and better things.

_This’ll be good, Carter_ , she tells herself.

* * *

A few weeks later, Sharon is in her apartment, laptops with live security feeds crowding her coffee table, listening to Rogers listen to _Kid A_ for approximately the two hundredth time since he moved in. “How to Disappear Completely” has been on repeat for the last two hours. She wants to murder whoever told Rogers to listen to Radiohead. Was it some coffee shop hipster who assured him Radiohead was the best band ever? Was it a SHIELD coworker? An Avengers teammate? Whoever it was, she is going to track them down and make their music player of choice play only “Barbie Girl” for the rest of time. 

The closing notes of the song trail off. Maybe Rogers will move on, Sharon hopes. What had she been listening to in the early 00s? N’Sync? Britney Spears? God, what she wouldn’t give for Rogers to spend an hour or so listening to “Toxic” twenty times in a row. At least that would be depressing in an entirely new way. But no. It’s just “How to Disappear Completely” again. _Fuck_.

Sharon’s starting to get genuinely worried now; no one in a good state of mind listens to “How to Disappear Completely” on repeat.

She checks the camera in Rogers’ unit. Technically, it’s there to catch footage of any intruders when she and Rogers are both out. She rarely checks it when Rogers is at home; she’s here to make sure he doesn’t get kidnapped or something, not to spy on his personal life. Not that he seems to have much of a personal life. Right now, Rogers is just sitting at his bare kitchen table, scribbling in a notebook.

Okay, so maybe he just likes music to get in the zone for his art or whatever. That’s fine, that’s normal. As she watches, he sets his pencil down, and puts his head in his hands.

Oh. Oh no. Are his shoulders shaking? Is he crying? Sharon minimizes the video feed. The audio feed is still live, and as Thom Yorke wails _this isn’t happening_ , she thinks she can make out a brutally choked-back sob from Rogers. She calls Fury. Thom Yorke keeps crooning mournfully. _I’m not here, I’m not here_. She gets up from the couch to pace while the phone rings once, twice, three times before Fury picks up.

“Am I on _suicide watch_ for Captain America?” she hisses.

“Is Rogers okay?” demands Fury.

“Yes. I mean, no. How okay is someone who’s listening to ‘How to Disappear Completely’ for the thirtieth time in one night?”

“This is not what I gave you my private number for, Agent 13.”

“Answer the question. Am I on suicide watch?”

Fury is silent for a too-long moment. “No,” he says eventually, then sighs. “Probably not, anyway. If Rogers is going to off himself, he’s going to do it in the field.” It’s a cold assessment, but not without sympathy.

“Jesus christ. Is he seeing anyone? How is he even cleared to be in the field?”

“SHIELD psychologists cleared him. His eval said he’s doing as well as can be expected, and that staying occupied and engaged is the best thing for him.”

Sharon’s not sure this counts as “occupied” or “engaged.” But she’s no expert, and Rogers’ psychological health isn’t in the scope of her assignment. She does start to keep a closer eye on him, though. Just in case. Her worst-case scenarios shift away from letting terrorists kidnap Captain America or Rogers getting assassinated on her watch. Now she worries about finding Steve Rogers hanging from his ceiling, face livid and purple, neck snapped into an unnatural angle that not even a super soldier could recover from.

Things do get less dire for Rogers as he settles into working at the Triskelion. He does go out. He goes out alone, but he goes out to explore DC, and he volunteers at the food bank and the children’s hospital. He goes to see Aunt Peggy pretty often. And he’s polite and friendly when she passes him in the halls of the apartment building. If not for her assignment, Sharon would try to befriend him. He seems like he needs a friend.

But she’s on assignment, undercover, and it wouldn’t be ethical. It would only cause more problems later down the line anyway. As it is, she’s uneasy about what will happen when she and Rogers inevitably run into each other in the halls of the Triskelion, once her assignment is over. So she sticks to neighborly courtesy, and idly considers leaving some pamphlets or something in Rogers’ mailbox, maybe a hotline number, but no. That’d be creepy. But she has to do _something,_ so she calls Natasha.

Natasha picks up her phone with a curt, “Hello?”

“Hi, this is Sharon. Um, Agent Thirteen, you know, I’m on—”

“Steve’s detail, yeah, hi. Everything okay?”

“Oh yes, no emergencies or anything. This isn’t an official call. I just. Um, I’m worried about Captain Rogers, I guess. You’re his teammate, and maybe his friend, I don’t know, and I thought—”

“Yeah, I don’t know either. If I’m his friend, I mean.” There’s an awkward silence. “I want to be, obviously, sorry, that came out wrong. Why are you worried?”

“He’s just so _sad_ ,” she blurts out.

“I _know_ ,” says Natasha. “I’ve—we, me and Clint, Tony sometimes—have been trying to keep him from spending so much time alone, get him out in the world, you know? Not sure it’s working. I mean, how much can it help, really, basically everyone he knew and loved is dead.”

They’re silent for a long moment. “That’s a downer,” says Sharon. “When you put it like that, trying to cheer him up seems…insensitive.”

Natasha laughs, then sighs. “Yeah, maybe. But, um, I don’t know. If there’s something else we—I—should be doing. I’m not exactly…good at that kind of thing. Not something they teach at assassin school.”

Sharon’s not sure how to respond to that. Natasha’s voice sounds wry, and Sharon can picture the accompanying smile, but she knows it’s not a joke. Natasha Romanoff is a Black Widow, and Sharon knows what that means. She knows from SHIELD gossip, and she knows because she has clearance. It means that there are still kill on sight orders for the other Black Widows who were left after the collapse of the Red Room. It means that assassin school isn’t fun shorthand or a joke. It means that people whisper in the Triskelion hallways that _you can’t trust Romanoff, doesn’t she seem fake, have you heard the things the Black Widows have done, she’s just Nick Fury’s pet spy and that’s the only reason she’s an Avenger_ …It means that Sharon might think Natasha’s competent and admirable and hot, but she doesn’t really know her, and maybe can’t.

“SHIELD Academy didn’t really cover that either,” says Sharon lamely. “Sorry. I know—maybe this isn’t appropriate, or ethical, just, I was worried. There’s only so many times you can listen to someone else listening to ‘How to Disappear Completely’ on repeat before you start thinking about staging an intervention, you know? I thought about, like, slipping some _Depression and You_ pamphlets in Rogers’ mailbox, or slipping a hotline number under Rogers’ door—” And okay, she’s babbling now. Sharon stops herself, and seriously considers just hanging up and pretending her phone had mysteriously broken mid-call.

“No, I get it. I’m glad you care, I’m glad you’re looking out for him. I’ll—do what I can, I guess.”

“Thanks.”

* * *

Sharon leaves any concerns about Rogers’ mental health out of her official reports. Maybe her logs have to show _8:06 AM: SUBJECT ARRIVES AT ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY AT GRAVE OF JAMES BUCHANAN BARNES_ , but they don’t have to include anything about the way Rogers’ fingers trace over and over the headstone, or the sorrow in the set of his back as he stands bowed over the empty grave of his best friend. Rogers’ grief is his own, and he’s more than entitled to it.

At least talking to Natasha seems to have paid off, because Rogers starts improving. He’s focusing more on the fun parts of 21st-century catch-up, and one night Sharon catches him laughing at _Young Frankenstein,_ and she can’t help the relieved _oh thank god_ she lets out. It’s the first time she’s ever heard him laugh.

Rogers spends more time with his teammates, too, and gets a little friendlier with his fellow volunteers at the shelter and hospital. He’s not happy, but he’s okay, so when Sharon goes to visit Aunt Peggy for the first time since she started this assignment, she’s got a pretty clear conscience about doing right by Rogers. Somehow, Aunt Peggy always knows when Sharon is feeling guilty about something. Maybe Sharon has been trained to withstand interrogation and torture, but none of that training covered “how to lie to your beloved great aunt who also used to be a spy.”

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” says Jenny at the sign-in desk. Sharon winces. She tries to visit at least once a month, but being on Rogers’ detail has thrown a wrench in her schedule.

“I know, work stuff,” she says with an apologetic smile. “How’s she doing today, do you know?”  

“Pretty good. She’s in the rec room right now, you can go on ahead.”

Sharon thanks Jenny and heads for the home’s airy, sun-filled rec room. This place is undeniably a nursing home, with medical equipment on discreet display and cheerful nurses bustling around the wide hallways. But there’s something genteel and kind about the place, too, more home than hospital, with actual paintings on the walls, not prints, and elegant, old-fashioned furniture. Of course, Aunt Peggy still likes to grumble about ending up in a boarding house in her dotage. If she’s feeling particularly mischievous, she calls it the _Home for Old Spies Past Their Expiration Date_.

In the rec room, Sharon girds herself for Aunt Peggy’s spotty and fading memory. Some days, Aunt Peggy doesn’t recognize her, and won’t be convinced that Sharon is her niece. Other days, time has come out of joint, and she calls Sharon Private Lorraine or Angie or Anna, or asks her if she’s new to the SSR. Sharon lets Aunt Peggy take the lead on those days, or if she’s especially confused or agitated, just leaves. The staff have assured her that’s for the best, but Sharon always feels like a failure, like if only she could say the right words, she could guide Aunt Peggy to clarity. She knows dementia doesn’t work that way, of course. Aunt Peggy is in the last years of her life, and entropy comes for everybody. Everybody who wasn’t frozen in a block of arctic ice.

Today, hopefully, is a good day. Aunt Peggy’s sitting by one of the big windows in the rec room, reading the paper, a cup of tea by her hand. When she looks up at Sharon, her eyes are blank at first, no recognition, and Sharon’s stomach sinks. She takes a breath, gets ready to launch into the whole spiel again, _it’s me, Sharon, your grand niece_ , but Aunt Peggy blinks, smiles, and sets her paper down on the table.

“Sharon, how lovely to see you, dear.”

“Hi, Aunt Peggy,” says Sharon with a relieved smile.

“Come, sit, have a cup of tea.”

They get through the usual courtesies, though Aunt Peggy doesn’t seem to remember the last time Sharon visited, when she’d mentioned her new undercover assignment. But Sharon’s used to that, and Aunt Peggy is sharp enough today that conversation about the news and family gossip flows easily—until Aunt Peggy mentions Rogers.

“Oh, you know, Steve came by just last week with—” The smile on Aunt Peggy’s face falters. She stops, closes her eyes, and takes a few shaky breaths. “Or perhaps he didn’t. Do you know, Sharon, when you’re this old, all your beloved dead seem so much closer. I feel as if I’m constantly dreaming of them, even when I’m awake.”

“No, Steve was here, Aunt Peggy. They found him, in the Arctic, and the serum kept him alive in the ice. He’s alive, he was really here,” Sharon reassures her. She wonders how often Rogers has to remind her, too, how often Aunt Peggy assumes he’s a ghost.

“Oh, good. Good.” Aunt Peggy trails off, frowning into the distance. “He’s been so sad. He misses Bucky so terribly, I worry about him. Who’s keeping him from indulging in his over-dramatic nonsense?”

Sharon laughs, startled. “Captain America is over-dramatic?” She’s about to say it doesn’t seem like him, but shit, she’s the one who’s overheard Rogers listening to crushingly sad music on repeat.

“Good lord, yes, he is. Everything’s always so intense with him. Bucky was the one who used to keep him from getting too ridiculous. Bucky’s gone now, of course…”

Sharon’s heard a handful of stories about Sergeant Bucky Barnes from Aunt Peggy. The few missions they’d gone on together had been _wild_ , the stuff of tense spy capers. After an ambivalent first impression, she and Barnes had warmed to each other after those missions, and even decades later, a spark of delighted mischief and affection lit up in Aunt Peggy’s eyes when she talked about Barnes. That affection is warming her eyes right now, tempered by the sorrow in the set of her mouth.

“How’d Bucky keep him from getting too ridiculous?” asks Sharon, hoping to keep her focused on better memories. And maybe she can glean some pointers from the sadly departed Barnes. Anything to avoid a repeat of the _Greatest Hits of the 90s and 00s [Sadness Version]: Now That’s What I Call Despair_.

“By sheer force of personality, as far as I can tell, and being quite blunt. Those two did not spare each other much. Mostly though, I think it was that Steve thought Bucky hung the moon, and would listen to him if no one else,” says Aunt Peggy with a wry, fond smile. Sharon grins, makes a note to tell Natasha. If anyone could be blunt with Rogers, it would be Natasha. “Enough about the past, dear, how are you getting along with SHIELD? What’s your current assignment again, I can’t quite recall—”

“I’m on security and surveillance for a...VIP, I guess.”

Aunt Peggy narrows her eyes. “I hope that isn’t a demotion.”

“I hope it’s not a demotion, too,” says Sharon with a grimace. “I don’t think it is. It’s an assignment straight from Director Fury, anyway.”

“You know your value, Sharon. Is this assignment beneath you and your skills? Is it busywork, or is it important, vital work?”

“It’s politics. Fury’s picked me as the best out of a set of bad options.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s not _important_ , dear.”

It’s Steve Rogers’ safety, so Aunt Peggy would definitely think it’s important. And Sharon’s not denying that. She’s just all too aware that she only got this assignment because of the World Security Council’s pressure on Fury. What happens if they want eyes on Rogers indefinitely?

Sharon doesn’t say any of that. “I know,” she says instead, but it must come out without enough conviction, because Aunt Peggy raises an exasperated eyebrow. “I’m just…worried it’s a dead end.”

“Sharon, I have faith that you can forge yourself a new path even out of a dead end, if that’s what this is. Though I doubt it’s a dead end, not if Nick gave you the assignment himself.” Aunt Peggy taps at her tea cup, frowning into the distance, and Sharon holds her breath. Maybe Aunt Peggy’s reached the limits of her good day. Sharon’s about to gently draw Aunt Peggy’s attention when she blinks rapidly and focuses on Sharon again. “Now that you have this assignment, you must excel in it, leverage every opportunity.”

“I do get to work with Agent Romanoff a little,” says Sharon. She’s Delta Team and an Avenger, that’s got to be some kind of opportunity. A totally professional, non-dating, networking and skills-improvement kind of opportunity. “Just for consults and some intel sharing,” she adds. That’s definitely overstating things, but whatever.

“SHIELD’s own Black Widow?” Sharon nods. “How is she settling in, by the way, do you know?” Even after retiring, and even now, Peggy likes to keep up to date with SHIELD, like it’s another of her assorted grandkids or nieces and nephews.

“Fine, as far as I know. Fury trusts her, she’s with the Avengers Initiative. She’s on Cap’s team, actually.”

“Oh, that’s good. I’d worried, you know, when Barton brought her in. The Black Widow program is…not kind. Their operatives were always very good, but not always stable.” Aunt Peggy frowns, her gaze going cloudy and inward for a moment.

“Natasha seems plenty stable to me.”

Aunty Peggy raises an eyebrow. “On first name terms then?”

Sharon fights not to blush, and fails. Aunt Peggy is absolutely going to know this isn’t a just two coworkers, co-working thing. “My assignment, we keep in touch about it.” Aunt Peggy’s silver eyebrow climbs higher. “And I’d like to be friends, maybe. We can be friends! Coworkers can be friends.”

“Of course they can. But be aware of what you might be getting yourself into, dear. Romanoff has undoubtedly been very brave, and a very good agent, but she’s not like your SHIELD Academy classmates. The way the Red Room raised those girls…” Aunt Peggy trails off, shakes her head. “Be careful. I’d rather you not earn yourself a nemesis.”

“Oh my god, Aunt Peggy, did _you_ have a Black Widow nemesis?”

“That’s classified, I’m sure.”

* * *

_Apparently, the way to handle Rogers and keep him from being “over-dramatic” and “ridiculous” is to be blunt,_ Sharon texts Natasha. She knows Natasha is mid-mission, so she’s not surprised when she doesn’t get a response for a couple of days. 

_Good thing i’m russian ;)_ , Natasha texts back eventually. Sharon grins. They exchange a few more businesslike texts about when Sharon should expect Rogers back and how Delta Team’s mission went, and then Natasha sends her a selfie from the Triskelion mess hall. Natasha’s raising a dubious eyebrow in front of a tray of frankly ominous mac and cheese that’s visibly congealing under a heat lamp. Sharon winces and feels a phantom surge of nausea just looking at it.

Eating in the mess hall after hours is a foolhardy venture at best. Everyone does it when they’re desperate enough, but everyone except the most iron-stomached or genetically enhanced regrets it the next day. Sometimes sooner. Sharon keeps a stash of emergency MREs hidden at her desk to avoid any late-night mess hall regrets. About half of the analysts and her entire cohort of field agents owe Sharon favors for partaking of her MRE stash.

_That desperate? D:_

_YES. I’ve eaten worse. Probably._

_I’ve got MREs in my desk, feel free to go help yourself._

_THANK YOU. I will absolutely make it up to you._

Sharon wants to send a flirty text back, something smooth and cool like _buy me a drink some time and we’ll call it even_ , but she dithers too long over whether it’d be appropriate or just sexual harassment, and then it’s too late to say anything without being weird.

She thinks about what Aunt Peggy had said, too, about earning herself a nemesis in Natasha. Sharon’s heard enough about the Red Room to know that it hadn’t been anything close to a benign training program. A few members of her SHIELD Academy cohort might interpret Sharon’s friendly overture as a trap, or a weak spot to be exploited, or even a power play—but only the more paranoid members. But for Natasha, trained in the Red Room, it might not be paranoia; it might be automatic instinct. Friendship might not be in Natasha’s vocabulary.

Sharon leaves the ball in Natasha’s court. They both get busy anyway, Natasha with Delta Team’s next round of training and mission prep, and Sharon with a bit of concerning chatter about attacks on Rogers. Sharon gets a few false alarms too, now that news of Rogers living in the building has trickled through the neighborhood. People try to discreetly gawk, or approach him for selfies and autographs and “thank you for your service”s. It’s exquisitely awkward. Sharon rescues him from it when she can conjure a reason to be hanging around.

After a couple weeks, Natasha calls her.

“So, the being blunt thing absolutely works.”

Sharon grins. “Yeah? I got that from Aunt Peggy, and she’d know. She said it’s how Rogers and Bucky Barnes were with each other.”

“Well thank you to both of you, I feel like me and Steve are getting along a lot better now. It’s—honestly, it’s a relief, being blunt. And thank you again for the emergency rations, you may have saved my life with that. I left a replacement in your desk.”

“Oh, you didn’t have to, but thanks. Mac and cheese that bad, huh?”

“I mean, Steve ate it, but even he looked kind of sick to his stomach afterward.”

They chat a little about office gossip, and complain about the new paperwork for requisitions, then, tentatively, slide into a conversation about the best place to go dancing in DC that isn’t overrun with people who work on the hill, college students, or assorted members of the intelligence community.

“Speaking of places to go dancing,” says Natasha, and Sharon gets a stupid little thrill of excitement that makes her shiver, but Natasha continues, “I’ve got a plan to get Rogers to cheer the fuck up.”

“A plan besides just bluntly telling him to cheer the fuck up?”

“Yeah. I’m thinking of setting him up on a date. Get him out, talking to people in a social, non-work way.”

Sharon thinks of how Rogers has been spending the last couple weeks. He’s doing better, yeah, but he still visits Aunt Peggy twice a week, and he’s at Barnes’ or the other Commandos’ graves more mornings than not. Sharon had once briefly dated a guy who’d lost both his parents and broken up with a long-term girlfriend all in the same year. He’d been nice, clearly trying hard, following the well-meaning advice to “just get out there, meet some people,” but neither of them had been able to pull free of the gravity well of his sadness. Sharon gets the same feeling from Rogers.

“I’m not sure he’s ready for a relationship,” says Sharon. Natasha snorts.

“Of course he’s not. He’s a mess. But it’ll get him out of his head a little, and maybe he’ll make some new friends if nothing else. And, I mean, it’ll be funny.” Natasha pauses. “That’s a terrible thing to say, isn’t it.”

Sharon laughs. It kind of is, but— “Maybe a little, but—it probably _will_ be funny. Like a terrible dating show. Imagine the conversational icebreakers.”

“Ha. _Ice_ breakers.”

“Oh my god,” groans Sharon as Natasha cackles.

“So, got any suggestions? I was going to try someone at SHIELD first.”

“Hmm, Amita in Comms? She’s nice, doesn’t want anything serious, so it would be low pressure. Last time I talked to her, she was complaining about how guys these days don’t know how to be gentlemen.”

“Perfect, thank you.”

* * *

Sharon gets the odd update from Natasha about how the quest to find Rogers a date is going. Success seems to be mixed, judging from how Rogers returns to his apartment alone and stone-faced. At least he’s getting out, making an effort. His visits to Aunt Peggy go down to once a week, and his graveside visits become a little less frequent too, so the dates are good for something. 

_Everyone just says ‘he’s so nice but we just didn’t click’ >:(_ texts Natasha after a few weeks. _Also now I feel like I’m dating a bunch of women by proxy._

Sharon chews at her lip as she considers a response. This is an opportunity to be flirty, or at least feel Natasha out about how she feels about dating women. _Are you going to poach any of Rogers’ dates for yourself? ;)_

_I don’t really date. It all feels like a cover, or an op._ There’s a pause, and Sharon winces. Okay. No dates with Natasha. That’s fine. Friendship, or hell, friendly coworkership are fine too. She tries to figure out a sufficiently supportive and commiserating text, but Natasha texts again before she can: _that’s fucked up, I know._

_But understandable. Dating feels pretty fake to me too sometimes._ Sharon stops, considers what she just typed. Sometimes? All the time. At least all the time since she’s worked at SHIELD. Her friends tell her she’s just gotten old and jaded, but Sharon’s not sure that’s it. _I always feel like I’m hiding something or covering up some part of me, not just the job._

_Maybe us workaholics should just date fellow coworkers._

Sharon wrestles down her inappropriate rush of hope at that, and huffs out a little laugh. _Tried that. We just ended up being coworkers who fuck sometimes. It was convenient, but that’s really all that “relationship” had going for it._

_That’s not enough for you?_

This conversation is a little more real than Sharon had expected. She considers deflecting, making a joke to get back to something light and undemanding. Natasha had been seemingly honest with her. Sharon should be honest back. _No. Is it enough for you?_

_I don’t know._

* * *

As her assignment creeps on, Rogers stops subjecting her to his _Greatest Hits of Despair and Nostalgia_ playlists. Either someone in the building complained, or he discovered the technological marvel of headphones on his own, because now he uses them unless he fires up his record player. Sharon doesn’t care about the reason, she’s just grateful: it’s one less distraction while she’s on high alert. 

The vague chatter about an attempt to capture Captain America is no longer vague. She asks to have a STRIKE team on standby down the block. Her request is denied. She asks to have Rogers informed—he should know about a threat to his own safety—but that’s denied, too.

It’s just interoffice politics, probably, and a case of boy-who-cried-wolf. Latveria always makes outrageous threats, and at any given time, there’s about five off-the-wall terrorist plots coming out of Von Doom’s regime. They never go anywhere. Some chatter about Von Doom wanting to capture Rogers’ super-serumed self for science is just another day at the office, so the higher-ups probably think it’s not worth mentioning to Rogers. It’s only Sharon who happens to think this plot is legit.

She could take it up the chain to Fury, but she doesn’t want to damage her credibility if she’s wrong. And considering the response time from local law enforcement, or a SHIELD team, she’s confident she can hold off any attack on Rogers until backup arrives. So she hunkers down, and keeps watch.

The week passes with the monotonous tension of a stakeout, long stretches of boredom punctuated by the hyper-alert focus of being on watch while Rogers is at home. For the first half of the week, the biggest possible security breach is Rogers getting food delivered (Thai; Sharon’s honestly a little proud), but Sharon keeps her weapons within reach and an eye on ten different security feeds anyway. Meanwhile Rogers keeps acting like the 90-something-year-old man he sort of is: watching the evening news, then reading while listening to music through his headphones.

On Thursday night, Von Doom’s men quietly swarm the building. Sharon’s ready for them: there are traps on the roof and at the unused back entrance with the sticky door—knockout gas. Two down, three to go, with Rogers still none the wiser. Sharon calls for SHIELD backup, and starts her countdown.

Two guys come through the front door dressed like city maintenance workers. Sharon bumps into them in the alcove and lets them pass, smiling absently and fumbling with what looks like her mail.

It’s not her mail.

It’s a bunch of junk hiding an overclocked taser, and the first guy goes down like a sack of bricks when she hits him with it. He twitches and groans while Sharon disarms the other guy with a kick he didn’t see coming. His gun skitters to the other side of the alcove.

In her opponent’s split-second of shock, they take the measure of each other. Sharon’s wearing her pink scrubs, and she’s about half this guy’s size.

“Captain America is protected by a little girl?” he sneers.

Sharon meets his leering smirk with stone-faced silence and dead shark eyes. He lunges, a clumsy grab she ducks under to deliver two swift punches, gut and balls. He keels over in pain, and she shoves him back toward the hallway, out of the too-visible alcove. God, she hopes this guy’s not going to shout the whole building down around them.

In the hallway, he’s recovered enough to take a few more clumsy swings. Sharon easily twists and dodges out of the way, but then his equilibrium is back and the fight is on.

Action, reaction, parry, punch: Sharon is good at the bruising dance of violence. She takes a few hits now, absorbs their force even when her ears ring and her vision goes sparkling white. She stays on the offensive, trying to keep quiet as she forces him further into the hallway. They’re both fucked if anyone comes out of their apartment right now, and this needs to be over, fast—she’s all too aware there’s another Latverian to subdue, and he could be anywhere. She slips this guy’s hold and tries one of her own, clinging to his back like a monkey until the sleeper hold takes. He slumps to the ground, and Sharon wastes no time in getting zip ties on him and the guy she’d tazed.

The sound of her heavy breathing is unsettlingly loud in the quiet hallway. She checks the security feeds on her phone while she tries to get it under control. Rogers is puttering around his kitchen, headphones still on, so he’s fine. Back entrance is clear, she’s just cleared the front, roof is clear...so where is the other guy? She checks the security feed right outside Rogers’ door: clear. She cycles rapidly through the rest of the camera feeds, until she spots the last Latverian picking the lock of the door to the unit directly below Rogers’.

“Four hostiles contained and in need of pick up, I’m going after the last,” she reports to SHIELD dispatch, then heads upstairs.

Her body aches, sharp and demanding, where she took the full force of the Latverian’s blows, but nothing’s broken. She’s fine. Not that it would matter if she wasn’t. The SHIELD team is at least three minutes out, and she can’t risk waiting for them. By the time she gets upstairs, the last Latverian has already broken into the unit below Rogers’. No shouting, so the guy who lives there isn’t home—she won’t be dealing with a screaming hostage. Or worse, Rogers barging in, shield swinging.

She pulls her gun, and enters carefully. She’d rather not shoot the guy—it’ll be a diplomatic mess if she kills a Latverian, and what if Rogers hears the shot—but Rogers’ and the civilians’ safety comes first. If Rogers notices anything, that’s a problem for future Sharon, after she disables this last threat. She takes cover in the kitchen nook, and peers past the kitchen entryway to where the last Latverian is about to climb out the living room window.

She’s too far away to tackle him, so she shoots him in the ass, and hopes she won’t regret this when she’s stuck in disciplinary hearings and meetings with the State Department. The Latverian lets out a strangled scream— _shit shit shit_ she hopes Rogers didn’t hear that—and falls back into the apartment, flailing for his own gun, but Sharon’s on him before he can manage it.

There’s some very undignified, vicious rolling around as they fight it out, long enough for Sharon to start wondering where the hell her backup is. This guy isn’t as big as the first one, but he has enough mass on her to overpower her, get his hands around her neck. With her last few seconds of consciousness, she gropes around the guy’s ass until she finds the bullet hole, and digs in with her fingers. He shrieks and loosens his grip enough for Sharon to break it and roll free, gasping, and that’s when her backup finally shows up and takes the guy down.

She stays on the ground, takes a few seconds to catch her breath, forcing air past her aching throat and into her burning lungs. Then she fumbles for her phone, checks the security feed on Rogers one more time: he’s reading, headphones still on.

* * *

The cleanup is swift and quiet, Rogers remaining none the wiser. God, what fucking book is he even reading, and is he listening to death metal through those headphones? Whatever, she hasn’t blown her cover. She’ll take it.

Sharon directs half the team to stay behind as Rogers’ security detail, then she refuses an ambulance and heads back to the Triskelion with the rest of the SHIELD agents and the bound Latverians. Agent Marks implacably directs her to the infirmary first, which Sharon wants to object to, because she has a report to make, and a diplomatic incident to avoid, and she wants to check in with the detail she left at the building—

“Maybe you can do all that after you make sure you’re not concussed and haven’t broken anything.”

It turns out she’s only mildly concussed, and “beaten up.”

“Is that your official diagnosis?” Sharon asks the doctor on call with what’s left of her voice post-choking.

“Yeah, basically.”

Sharon’s prescribed some painkillers and light activity only, and when she tries to make a break for the elevators and her desk, she’s stopped by some looming, stern-faced nurses.

“How about you rest up a little before heading to your desk,” says one, and it’s not so much a suggestion as it is a command, so Sharon figures she’ll stay in the infirmary bed until she can get past them.

Of course, then the adrenaline crash hits her hard, and she falls asleep mid-drafting a report on her phone.

When she wakes up, Natasha is sitting by her bed, reading on a tablet while eating ice cream. Sharon moves to sit up, but oh, that’s a mistake. She can’t help the whimper she lets out as every hit she took last night makes itself known.

“Hey, good job keeping Steve from being kidnapped by Dr. Doom.”

Sharon smiles, pleased. “Thanks.”

Then she realizes that she’s in the infirmary, still wearing her baby pink scrubs which are by now smeared and splattered with blood, she’s covered in blooming bruises, and also her hair probably looks horrifying. And Natasha Romanoff is sitting there looking put-together and perfect in jeans and a nice sweater. This is really not the impression Sharon wanted to make on her.

Natasha leans down and pulls something from a bag, handing it to her. It’s a pint of ice cream, Ben & Jerry’s coffee toffee bar crunch.

“For your throat,” explains Natasha, and yeah, ice cream for breakfast feels like a pretty great idea, and now she’s maybe a little in love with the Black Widow.

“Oh my god, thank you,” she says, and shovels ice cream into her mouth in what is undoubtedly a deeply unattractive manner.

Natasha smiles, complete with dimples, then updates her on the Latverian plot to kidnap Captain America. Sharon wonders if this is her debrief, but it’s a little too chatty for that, and she’s never had a debrief involving ice cream before. She and Natasha boggle together at Rogers’ obliviousness, and then they detour into Natasha’s latest attempt to set Rogers up, before Natasha winds back around to the ostensible reason she’s here.

“So, State is probably going to handle it from here, there’s—” Natasha waves a vague hand, “politics and diplomacy involved, whatever. Stick around the infirmary for a bit, Fury’s going to want to talk to you.”

“Who’s covering Rogers’ detail right now?”

“We’re about to head to New York for some Battle of New York, rebuilding PR thing, so don’t worry about it, Barton and I’ll have it covered. Take a few days off, Sharon.”

After Natasha leaves, Sharon gets a parade of visitors while she hangs out waiting for Fury. It seems she’s been missed at the Triskelion.

A gaggle of techies and analysts descends on her, bearing tea and pastries.

“Sharon! You saved Captain America!” says Cameron as he hands over the still-steaming tea.

“Is it true you took out ten Doombots on your own?” asks Amy, wide-eyed.

“Technically, you guys are not cleared to know about that,” she says, but takes the tea and pastries anyway.

They sit with her for a bit while she sips at the tea and eats the pastries, updating her on all the Triskelion gossip. Sharon knows other field agents don’t bother to hang out with the techies and analysts, or even talk to them if it’s not work-relevant. There’s a pretty strict divide between those SHIELD agents who go out in the field, and the ones who stay at the Triskelion. The divide between clearance levels doesn’t help. But Sharon is Director Peggy Carter’s niece, even if most of SHIELD’s rank and file doesn’t know that, and she was taught the value of respecting and appreciating all her colleagues. Aunt Peggy worked her way up from nearly the bottom, and so did Fury, and neither of them got to where they were by ignoring the people who worked at the more unglamorous, tedious parts of the job. So Sharon doesn’t either.

A few of her fellow field agents pop their heads in too, offering fist bumps and congratulatory nods, and then Fury shows up, complete with flapping coat. Sharon’s never going to stop thinking that’s unnecessary. He’s in the Triskelion for god’s sake, he could wear business casual or fatigues like the rest of them. The eyepatch and general aura are intimidating enough.

“Well done, Agent Thirteen. I’ll have a commendation put in your file for last night.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I’ll expect a full written report by the end of the week, but give me the highlights for now.”

Fury mostly lets her talk uninterrupted, only frowning when she mentions that her requests for a back-up STRIKE team or to inform Rogers about the threat had been denied. Sharon’s stomach flutters with unease at that, but she’d followed protocol. There’s more than a few layers of command between her and Fury, she’s not usually supposed to go straight to him according to her mission parameters.

After a moment of glowering thought, Fury says, “Report straight to me from now on. If you can’t reach me, talk to Hill. I’m reclassifying this mission as SHIELD Special Service.”

“Yessir.”

“Alright, continue,” he prompts.

Once he’s been briefed to his satisfaction, Fury dismisses her with orders to spend the rest of the week doing nothing more strenuous than paperwork. Given that she feels like a piece of tenderized meat, Sharon’s happy to oblige.

* * *

When she gets back to her apartment, she peels off her dirty scrubs and runs a bath. While she’s waiting for the tub to fill, she takes her painkillers, takes stock of her injuries. They’re nothing serious in the grand scheme of things. She’d gotten off lightly: a lot of bad bruising, a pounding headache, some cuts and scrapes. Her face is going to be kind of lumpy and bruised for a week. But nothing’s broken, nothing’s going to scar. She’s been lucky about that in the line of duty, so far at least, has only broken an arm and torn some muscles, gotten a few bullet grazes. It’s early in her career though. Plenty of time to accumulate more war wounds. 

She examines the bruises that cover her arms, her neck, her ribs. There are rapidly darkening bruises on her jaw and cheek. There are some on her thighs and knees too, and the knee bruises are especially painful, close to the bone as they are. She presses lightly on each bruise, testing, feeling out the limits of the pain. Bearable. The bruises are seemingly growing more dark and livid by the moment, some of them so obviously the result of a man’s grip on her that she won’t be able to pass them off as the result of epic clumsiness. She prods at the bruise around her throat, winces at the sharp ache.

Maybe normal people would be horrified or upset at the battlefield of bruises on her pale skin. Sharon’s just proud. She won the fight. She’s still standing. Who cares about some bruises? They’ll heal soon enough. She’s just going to have to wear long sleeved shirts and scarves, go heavy on the makeup and concealer so as not to arouse Rogers’ suspicion.

When the bath is ready, she slides in with a groan. The water is almost too hot to be bearable, and her skin starts going pink almost immediately, but Sharon doesn’t care. The heat overrides all her aches, and she can relax and let the water hold her.

* * *

After the thwarted kidnapping attempt, security and surveillance on Rogers enter into a mostly boring routine. Weeks pass uneventfully, Rogers’ routine remaining even and uninterrupted. He does go on a couple more long-term missions, so Sharon gets to go back to the Triskelion for a couple weeks to work on making sure there’ll be no more attempts on Rogers from Von Doom. She doesn’t even tell anyone _I told you so_ about it, though she thinks it, a lot. 

One of the bright and interesting spots amid the gray of Sharon’s new tedium is Natasha. Natasha’s gift of post-fight ice cream seems to have eased some reserve in both of them, because Natasha texts more freely now, about non-work things, like her cat Liho, and her personal try-a-new-hobby-every-week-or-so challenge.

_Are you going to pick one at the end of the year or something?_ asks Sharon.

_I don’t know, I kind of like just trying new ones. Can my hobby be trying new hobbies?_

_Sure_ , responds Sharon, then squints at Natasha’s photo of her attempt at candy-making, this week’s new hobby. The candy is...pretty misshapen, and the texture of the hard candy looks alarmingly bubbly. _Doesn’t seem like candy-making is your thing anyway_.

Sharon takes to sending Natasha new, increasingly off-the-wall hobbies to try: model train building, making tiny dioramas of historical events, unicycling, mead brewing...Natasha takes each suggestion seriously, and sends Sharon photos of her trying them.

Apart from talking to Natasha, Sharon’s social life takes a hit thanks to her Rogers-surveillance dependent, weird schedule, so she’s down to catching quick lunch dates with friends, and day-drinking with her high school friend Pooja, whose schedule is similarly weird thanks to being a resident in the ER. They commiserate over the horrors of being on-call, and sometimes they catch an early afternoon movie together, sharing the mostly empty theaters with seniors and small children.

It’s not a bad life. Just—dull. It’s decidedly not what Sharon had wanted or expected of working at SHIELD.

That’s no excuse for not doing her job though, so Sharon works on building up a friendly neighbors relationship with Rogers too, riding that edge of just flirty enough to build a good rapport, and not so flirty that Rogers will get any ideas. Which is kind of a shame: under better circumstances, for both of them, Sharon would have been happy to date Rogers. She knows he finds her attractive, his body language gives that away, and while he’s awful at flirting, he’s always polite, and wry in a way Sharon finds terribly endearing.

_Rogers is terrible at flirting but I’m a little charmed anyway_ , Sharon texts Natasha after Rogers fumbles through another attempt at friendly flirting.

_Can I set him up with you????_

_No, that would be unethical. Also I know way too much of his personal business and it’s weird._

Sharon would really like to know less of Rogers’ personal business. Without any pressing security threats to focus on—and she has _looked_ for pressing security threats, if only out of boredom—Sharon just feels like a creepy stalker who knows how often Rogers gets up in the middle of the night to make himself a midnight snack of oatmeal. _Oatmeal_. Who even does that? It seems like it’s plain oatmeal too. God, Rogers depresses her. She can’t even enjoy the view of him in his boxer briefs if he’s going to eat sad midnight oatmeal while he’s half-naked.

Around the eighth time she’s woken up by the motion alerts on the video feeds in Rogers’ apartment thanks to this midnight snack habit, she emails Fury to request the video surveillance be curtailed.

“Saw something you didn’t want to see, huh?” asks Fury over the phone.

“In my professional opinion, the exterior security feeds are sufficient to catch any attempts at intrusion or sabotage.”

Fury snorts. “Not worried about being on suicide watch anymore?”

“Candidly, sir, Rogers’ life is still depressing, but he seems to be doing all right.”

Sharon had seen him add Nutella to his midnight oatmeal just last week, so things were really looking up.

“I got some pushback, but I did get the okay to scale back to audio bugs only in Rogers’ apartment. You’re cleared to disable and remove the cameras next week, when Rogers is in the field.”

“And the term of my assignment?” asks Sharon, trying not to sound too hopeful. Fury just sighs.

“I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

* * *

Over the next few months, Sharon stops two foreign governments’ attempts at planting bugs in Rogers’ apartment, one creepily dedicated Cap fanboy, a handful of journalists who should have known better, a gaggle of paparazzi who didn’t know better but who certainly learned their lesson, three freelance mercs’ attempts at capturing Cap for the presumable bounty and/or ransom they’d get for him, and four mad scientists, one of whom insisted “I just need a little blood! A teeny bit! He won’t even notice!” as she’d hauled him away.

_I’m sorry I ever thought this job was boring_ , Sharon complains to Natasha. Natasha just sends her laughing emoji back, plus a picture of Natasha holding Liho up so it looks like he’s hanging onto a curtain rod, with the text _HANG IN THERE_. It’s stupid and hilarious and absolutely adorable. The cat and Natasha, but especially Natasha.

_He totally scratched you after that, didn’t he._

_Yes. WORTH IT._

She laughs, sends, _yeah, okay, probably_ , and saves the picture.

Boring or not, Sharon chafes at how this assignment is dragging on, starts worrying that she’ll be stuck stagnating on Cap-watch just as her career was supposed to be starting. It’s not that keeping Rogers (and by extension the super soldier serum) safe isn’t important work. It’s just that an indefinite undercover protection detail isn’t what Sharon wants from her career. _Patience_ , she tells herself. This is part of paying her dues, right?

So she keeps her worries to herself, and does her job.

She keeps up the delicate balance between neighborly and flirty with Rogers, and falls over into flirty a little too much, has to pull back. She handles both the genuine threats to Rogers, and the false alarms and nuisances. And as spring approaches, Fury starts checking in with her more often, which makes Sharon suspect the World Security Council or Pentagon are micromanaging again, or maybe that Fury knows about some threat she doesn’t.

“Sir, if there’s a threat, I need to know about it to do my job effectively,” she says, after the fourth time Fury calls her for a sitrep.

“This involves some things above your clearance level, Agent 13.”

“Then raise my clearance level.”

Fury’s silence after that makes Sharon quail a little before he says, “If anyone from SHIELD apart from the Avengers, me, or Hill, approaches Rogers outside of work, or tries to relieve you of your post, I want to know about it immediately.”

That doesn’t sound good. If this is just office politics, Sharon wants to stay well out of it. But if it’s not…she doesn’t know what the hell is going on. “Understood, sir.”

For weeks, the warning from Fury doesn’t seem to come to anything. Rogers goes on a couple missions, Sharon stays on uneasy alert, and their mutual routine stays uneventful. Sharon only hears from Natasha a few times, but then she’s on the same missions as Rogers is, and just as busy.

Then Nick Fury gets shot in Rogers’ apartment, Sharon blows her cover, and her week only gets worse from there.

Sharon has never thought of firefights or hand-to-hand fights as nightmarish: they are the world reduced to the most simple of processes, action and reaction, the predictable ways that mass and velocity and force interact. For others, she knows the simple presence of violence in their lives, even violence their job demands, never stops feeling unreal. Not Sharon. She thinks she might have found the Battle of New York nightmarish, what with the aliens and the space whales, but she’d been in DC for that, helping to coordinate SHIELD’s response.

What’s later called the Battle of the Triskelion is nightmarish. At every turn, there’s a part of her that cannot believe what’s happening. She’s shooting people she thought were her colleagues, she’s hearing members of her academy cohort chant _heil HYDRA_ , she’s learning that they’re moments away from Project Insight possibly killing millions of innocent people.

It all turns choppy and confusing in Sharon’s mind. She knows she kept Cameron safe and stopped Rumlow from shooting him, she knows she had moment after moment of tense, awful doubt with every panicked person she met in the Triskelion’s rooms and hallways. _Are you HYDRA, can I trust you_ —She knows she got orders from Hill at some point—

_Hill, running towards the control room as Sharon shepherds the techs out: get as many non-Nazis as you can out, stay with them afterward, stay safe until you get orders or extraction_. _How can I tell if they’re Nazis or not, Sharon asks, and Hill doesn’t quite answer. You can trust me, Rogers, and Romanoff, Hill says. Anyone else, don’t lower your gun._

She knows she got as many people as she could out of the Triskelion, that she got out herself before it all went down in flames, only to get out and see the Potomac on fire.

She’s not sure how any of it happened, and by the time she’s getting triaged by first responders, she’s halfway sure she has to wake up. Shock, adrenaline, whatever it is, Sharon can’t find her still center of calm the way she usually can. She vaguely registers that she gets the all-clear ( _mild smoke inhalation, a little banged up, you’ll be fine_ ), and then she’s being taken to FBI HQ along with all the rest of the uninjured Triskelion survivors.

“Agent Thirteen? What the hell is going on? Cap said—”

“The helicarriers, what happened?”

“Was it aliens again? I don’t, I can’t—”

Sharon wants to scream that she has no idea what’s going on, and she can’t even be sure it’s not aliens or that the people in this van with her aren’t secret Nazis, but she looks at the scared and shocked faces around her, and swallows her own panic. _What would Aunt Peggy do_ , she asks herself, and does that. She puts on Aunt Peggy’s air of no-nonsense, chin up calm, and answers what questions she can, tells everyone to stay calm and cooperate with the FBI because SHIELD has been compromised.

“By Nazis,” says Juan from Accounting, looking pretty crazy-eyed.

“Yeah. Apparently,” says Sharon, and they all contemplate that for the rest of the van ride.

The FBI scrambles to find somewhere to put all of them, and settles on a set of conference rooms kept under guard. Sharon asks for updates, or if she can contact Hill, and only gets a vague response of _later_. She maybe starts having wild ideas about busting out of this conference room, but she remembers Hill’s orders. She has to sit tight.  

When Sharon’s finally questioned, she doesn’t have much in the way of answers for the agents. Her assignment on Rogers’ detail has left her out of the loop, even more so since she started reporting directly to Fury. And Fury, she realizes, must have had suspicions, given his orders to go straight to him or Hill if anyone else from SHIELD got involved in her assignment. She tells the FBI as much. And then, finally, struggling to keep her voice even, she tells them about the shooting at Rogers’ apartment, and about what happened in the Triskelion control room. When they ask her about HYDRA, she has nothing to say.

Well, nothing but, “I have no fucking idea what’s going on.”

The FBI agent sighs, gives her a commiserating, slightly wild look. “Yeah. Yeah, there’s a lot of that going around.”

* * *

Eventually Hill shows up, still soot-stained and sweaty, and clearly running on sheer stubborn necessity, and debriefs all of them. It’s the grimmest debrief Sharon has ever received. It turns out SHIELD and a bunch of other government agencies and offices have been harboring HYDRA agents since the Cold War. And SHIELD’s Project Insight was nearly used to murder millions of HYDRA’s enemies. And Romanoff dumped just about all of SHIELD’s files onto the internet. Oh, and Director Fury is dead. Which is probably Sharon’s fault. So that’s great.

“This is worse than the aliens,” says Cameron. A hysterical titter of laughter runs through the room. Hill ignores it.

“A bunch of you were on Insight’s target list. If you were, we’re taking it as tentative confirmation that you’re not a secret Nazi, so congrats, you’re free to go home. You will definitely still be wanted for additional questioning, so don’t leave the area. The rest of you, you’re staying as guests of the FBI for the night until you’re cleared as being...not Nazis,” says Hill. “Agent Thirteen, I need a moment with you.”

“Am I still on Rogers’ detail?” asks Sharon as she follows Hill to another conference room.

“The Marines are on Rogers’ detail right now. He’s at Walter Reed.”

“Is he okay? Is Nat—Agent Romanoff okay?” It crashes in on Sharon all of a sudden, all of the things she doesn’t know, the people she’s not sure are alive or dead or secret Nazis. “And Trip, I mean, Agent Triplett, is he, I need to call—”

“Rogers and Romanoff will be fine, they just got a little shot, they’ll walk it off.” She pauses, and Sharon’s stomach sinks. “I don’t know anything about Agent Triplett’s status, I’m sorry. About Director Fury—”

Sharon swallows hard, the memory of trying to save him welling up as inexorably and rapidly as his blood had. “I’m so sorry. I was the first responder, I should have—”

“He’s fine. I mean, barely, he needs to sit his ass in a bed for longer than a few hours after major surgery, but he’s alive. That information is need to know only, Agent Thirteen. And no one outside of us and the Avengers needs to know. Fury wants to stay officially dead for now. He asked me to let you know so that, and I quote, ‘Carter doesn’t sit around feeling sorry for herself that she got the director killed.’”

“Oh.” Sharon sags on abruptly shaky legs, and Hill guides her over to a chair.

“You did good, Carter.”

“Thanks. Am I—should I—what are my orders now, ma’am?”

“For now, cooperate fully with the investigation. You’ve got nothing to hide, apart from the knowing Fury’s alive thing. Romanoff or I will let you know if there’s anything else. Probably you’re about to be unemployed though. Sorry.”

* * *

Within a week, it’s pretty clear that Sharon is, in fact, out of a job. She gets cleared more quickly than most: she was on the Insight list, which at this point is more of a character reference than anything else, and between that, her connection to Peggy Carter, and the work she’s done at SHIELD, it’s obvious she’s no HYDRA agent. SHIELD as a whole has been deemed a lost cause, of course. 

She gives herself a day or so to process, and spends most of it numb and staring vaguely at the news, constantly refreshing the casualty lists. And the wanted lists. There are names she recognizes on both. She looks at the Insight targeting list in full too, which by now is neatly categorized and indexed on the internet. Just about every single person Sharon cares about is on that list. It takes a long time before she stops shaking.

Her phone is full of frantic messages that she’s not sure how to respond to: only some of her friends and family officially know she works for SHIELD. But she knows she has to respond, so she calls or texts everyone back, assures them she’s okay and not a secret Nazi. She finally gets a hold of Trip, too, and after the mutual assurances that they’re okay, that they’re safe, they indulge in a bit of near-hysterical panic.

“What the _fuck_ ,” whispers Sharon into the phone.

“Nazis. HYDRA still around. _What the fuck_.”

They laugh in sheer disbelief, and maybe a few tears squeeze out of Sharon’s eyes, and maybe Trip’s breathing gets rough and shaky, but they don’t say anything about it, just have their hysterics together as quietly as possible.

“Your team?” asks Sharon.

“Garrett—he was HYDRA. My _superior_. It’s been a fucking mess out here, Sharon,” says Trip, voice trembling.

“Yeah, here too. The Triskelion’s gone, and the Potomac’s full of destroyed helicarriers.” And bodies, but she doesn’t say that. Instead, she asks, “What’re we gonna do, Trip?” Sharon’s entire life plan has just gone up in smoke and secret Nazis, and it’s only just hitting her now. She’s never not had a plan.

She hears Trip take a deliberate, bracing breath in. “The right thing. We don’t need SHIELD to do that.”

She can practically see him square his shoulders as he says it. Sharon smiles, and lets that truth plant its roots in her. A tree by the river, just like Aunt Peggy always used to say. Yeah. She can still do the right thing.

* * *

Sharon may be unemployed now, but she’s just as, if not more, busy than she was when she was on Rogers’ detail. She has interviews with assorted federal agents, debriefs for cleared former SHIELD employees, hearings in various closed-room Senate hearings.

And she has a lot of funerals to attend.

For a week straight, she staggers home from wake after wake, where the shell-shocked mourners turn from sorrow to disbelief to anger. The betrayal of colleagues turning on them deadens the grief, turns it strangely toxic. _Do we even know he wasn’t HYDRA?_ whispers Agent Cord after one of the mournful toasts. The room goes quiet. But the answer, _no, we don’t_ simmers in the silence.

Some of the dead had been HYDRA. Some of their former colleagues bit down on cyanide-filled false teeth, heil HYDRAing as they seized. No one but the families goes to those funerals.

She spots Rogers at the periphery of some of the funerals, solitary and stern, more like a statue of Captain America than a flesh and blood person. They don’t approach each other. Sharon’s pretty sure he’s still mad at her. That frosty _neighbor_ and the accompanying glare he’d given her in the Triskelion hallway still sting.

_Does Rogers hate me_ she wants to ask Natasha. It’s stupid and silly, given everything. He doesn’t know her. He doesn’t even know she’s Peggy Carter’s niece yet. But she’s tipsy and upset and she’s been to too many funerals and wakes full of people eyeing each other with fear and distrust. She’s had to explain to Aunt Peggy, again and again, what’s happened to SHIELD.

She ends up texting Natasha _I never want to go to so many funerals ever again_. She doesn’t get an answer. Natasha’s probably ditched her phone by now, or she’s just plain too busy. The disappointment makes Sharon tear up anyway.

* * *

A few weeks later, when Sharon gets back from her first interview with the CIA, she finds Natasha waiting in the hallway, leaning against the wall as she stares at Rogers’ apartment door. There’s still crime scene tape up. The pose is maybe meant to be casual, but Sharon sees the weariness in it, something in the careful tilt of Natasha’s head and the almost-tension in her shoulders. There’s a plastic grocery bag at her feet.

“I have the key, if you need to get into Rogers’ place,” says Sharon.

Natasha pushes herself off the wall. “No, I’m here to see you, if that’s okay. I, uh, brought booze. And ice cream.”

“The briefing’s going to be that bad, huh?”

“I’m not here for a briefing. Well, maybe a tiny briefing.”

“I can handle a tiny briefing if ice cream and booze are on offer,” says Sharon with a smile, and lets Natasha in. They head straight for the kitchen table, where Natasha starts unpacking the bag. There’s a pretty ambitious number and variety of ice cream flavors, to say nothing of the entire handle of whiskey.

“I’m glad you got out of the Triskelion okay,” says Natasha as Sharon fetches spoons and glasses.

“Yeah, you too. I heard you got shot, you okay now?”

Natasha nods. “Nothing I couldn’t walk off.”

They sit down together at the kitchen table and survey their ice cream options. The silence sits awkward and heavy, but Sharon’s not sure if she should say something, or wait for Natasha.

“I, uh, hope Rogers isn’t too upset with me, for the whole undercover thing.”

Natasha rolls her eyes and snorts, reaches for a pint of strawberry cheesecake ice cream.

“He’ll get over it, he knows you were just doing your job. Tony was the same way after my cover on his detail got blown. At least you never stabbed Rogers with a needle, Tony will never let me forget that.” Natasha picks out the coffee toffee bar crunch and hands it over to her, and Sharon smiles at her, weirdly touched that Natasha’s remembered. “So, feel free to tell me to fuck off if you don’t want anything to do with SHIELD’s continued shit show, but I figure you’ve been helping all the poor Level 1s and 2s, so you’re at least a little invested. Good work on that, by the way. Maria and Fury really appreciate it.”

“Well, I’m unemployed. Just trying to keep busy,” jokes Sharon weakly.

In actuality, after seeing the sixth terribly familiar name on the FBI’s Wanted on Suspicion of HYDRA Ties list, she’d been this close to going hunting for them on her own. But at hearing after hearing, in waiting room after waiting room, Sharon saw the confused and terrified gaggle of SHIELD’s rank and file, the support staff, paper pushers, analysts who’d never traveled beyond their desks. And while Hill and Natasha and other senior agents were understandably busy rounding up HYDRA traitors and burned agents, that innocent rank and file needed help too. They may not have high clearances or valuable intel, but they shouldn’t be left to twist in the wind, alone and confused. Helping them felt like the right thing to do.

“Guessing you won’t be unemployed for long,” says Natasha with a knowing little smile, then launches into her promised tiny briefing. It’s mostly logistical concerns about the continued fallout of an entire agency going up in flames. Then Natasha opens up the whiskey and pours out a generous splash. “You’ll need this for the next part. Do you know anything about the Winter Soldier?”

“No,” says Sharon, and sips warily at the whiskey. The burn of the alcohol is sharp and hot as it chases out the lingering sweetness of the ice cream. When Natasha tells her who the Winter Soldier is, and how he survived his supposed death, Sharon tosses back the whole glass. God, what is she going to tell Aunt Peggy? _So, good news: Bucky Barnes is alive. Bad news, he was horribly tortured and brainwashed into being an assassin for HYDRA!_ She hopes, with a sick surge of selfishness, that Rogers is the one to break the news to Aunt Peggy.

“Yeah. You’re not likely to run into him, but I thought in case he comes back here, you should know what’s up. Don’t engage or try to apprehend him, just call me.”

“Right, yeah, of course.” She pours herself some more whiskey. “Holy shit, Bucky Barnes is alive.”

“Maybe,” says Natasha grimly. “Not so sure how much of that guy is left in the Winter Soldier.”

Sharon’s starting to feel the whiskey, the beginnings of tipsiness, like the balance point at the top of a roller coaster’s climb. Some of the ice cream is dripping condensation onto the cheap faux wood of her kitchen table. Her half-finished pint of coffee toffee bar crunch has already gone soft. Natasha knocks back her glass of whiskey, then gets up to put some of the ice cream in the freezer.

“Oh, hello. You’ve got the good stuff,” she says, and pulls out Sharon’s emergency vodka.

“Briefing over?”

“Briefing over,” agrees Natasha, and takes the vodka with her to Sharon’s couch. Sharon grabs the whiskey and follows. For a few minutes, they sit and drink in grim silence, staring into their drinks.

“Did you know? Did you suspect? I keep thinking about every mission, every briefing, if there’s something I should have seen—”

It’s what keeps Sharon up at night. If only she’d been more observant, if only she’d been more paranoid...the lack of backup on the Latverian plot against Rogers should have tipped her off. She should have looked into that, instead of writing it off as office politics.

“No. I didn’t suspect a damn thing.”

Natasha’s flat tone gives nothing away, so Sharon risks a look up at her face. Her expression is calm and even before a spasm of some strong emotion overtakes her, and she knocks back another drink. It’s not really a comfort to hear that Natasha hadn’t suspected anything either.

“They’re going to offer you the job at the CIA,” says Natasha, after the silence tips towards strained. “You should take it.”

“Yeah?”

Sharon isn’t sure. She’d only agreed to the interview because working at the CIA was, once upon a time, Sharon’s fallback if SHIELD hadn’t worked out. She’d spent nearly the whole interview wondering if the CIA was full of HYDRA too, if she’d even know if they were. When the interviewer asked her how she felt about the CIA’s mission and ethos, she’d hadn’t really been able to summon up the expected fervor and enthusiasm.

“Yeah. I mean, unless you want to make a total career change. Wouldn’t blame you if you do.”

“I just want to do the right thing. I’m not sure the CIA is the right place for that.”

Natasha snorts. “No offense, Sharon, but I think we’re all past the luxury of that kind of naivety.”

“I don’t think it’s naive, to want to do the right thing,” says Sharon quietly.

“No. I guess it’s not. But it’s naive to expect it from the CIA, or SHIELD, or any of them.”

Natasha sloshes some of the vodka into her glass, and knocks it back, then sets the glass on the table with just a little too much force. Her empty hands are small and unmanicured, and she sets them uncertainly on her knees, then her thighs, opening and closing her fists. Sharon thinks about taking Natasha’s hand to still the restless motion. They’re sitting so close to each other. Instead, she gets up, wobbles just a little at the head rush from too much alcohol, too fast, and gets them both some water. Natasha’s lips move up into a tiny smile, and she gives Sharon a wry look, but she takes the water.

Sharon curls back up on the couch. “I guess—I just know what SHIELD was supposed to be, you know? I know what Aunt Peggy wanted for it. Part of why I joined was to keep up her work and her legacy. And I worked so hard to get there. And now…”

Now it was all ashes, rotting from the start. Ten years of Sharon’s life to get here, more if you counted the years of picking martial arts over ballet, of working towards acceptance into the SHIELD Academy. She can’t say any of it was worth it right now. The alcohol in her stomach sloshes uncomfortably. Fuck, they should eat something other than ice cream to soak up all this booze.

“For the longest time, I kept expecting SHIELD to be like the Red Room, or Department X. And it was, in some ways. No intelligence agency is squeaky clean, they’re all doing dirty, bloody work, and I can do dirty, bloody work. But I thought—” Natasha closes her eyes, disgust—or maybe self-loathing—rippling across her features.

“You thought SHIELD would be different,” prompts Sharon.

“Stupid, really,” says Natasha.

“It’s not stupid.” Natasha gives her a thin, mirthless smile. “It’s not,” Sharon insists, turning to face her more fully. “SHIELD was supposed to be different, people you trusted told you it would be. And it’s not—it wasn’t all bad. SHIELD’s saved the world a few times, hasn’t it? We’ve done good things, right things.”

Sharon’s maybe trying to convince herself now, to salvage something out of the wreckage of her life plans. She’d gone through the files Natasha dumped onto the internet, looking into all of her own past missions, checking for HYDRA’s fingerprints. She hadn’t found anything conclusive.

“That faith you have that you’ve done the right thing? I don’t have that. I’m not sure I’m ever going to have that. I thought with SHIELD, I could, but look how that’s turned out. It’s just the Red Room, over and over again.”

Natasha’s wide and haunted eyes make her look terribly young. She’s only a few years older than Sharon. With her reputation, it’s too easy to think of Natasha as the ageless and untouchable Black Widow, but moments like this one remind Sharon that Natasha is just another agent like her. She’s human and hurting and touchable, and Sharon wants to offer her some comfort, if she’ll accept it. _If not now, when_ , thinks Sharon, and reaches over to take Natasha’s hands. They’re warm, a little smaller than hers, with the same calluses. Sharon squeezes, and holds Natasha’s eyes with all the intensity her tipsy self can muster.

“You’re an Avenger. You basically saved the world from aliens, and you saved millions of lives by helping to stop Insight. And dumping all of SHIELD’s files online? That was the right thing. Fighting HYDRA is the right thing.”

Natasha squeezes her hands back, tips her head forward as she takes a deep breath in. Her sleek hair falls to cover her face, and Sharon wants to push it back to reveal the curve of her cheek, wants to let her hand rest on Natasha’s jaw, or neck, to feel the warm softness of those vulnerable places. A bit of handholding, and suddenly Sharon wants so much more. She wants to lean closer, wants to feel Natasha’s generous lips against her own. Maybe she’s made a mistake.

“You give a good pep talk, Carter,” says Natasha, that tiny, Mona Lisa smile of hers warmer now as she pulls her hands away.

* * *

They end up ordering food to soak up some of the alcohol, and distract themselves from their depressing professional lives by watching some movies from Sharon’s slightly embarrassing collection of mediocre action movies. So she maybe picks up whatever action movies she sees in those $5 bins, what of it? There are worse splurges, right?

“You don’t get enough of this at work?” asks Natasha.

“It’s different,” protests Sharon. “Anyway, I just think they’re kind of funny.”

Sharon finds their over-the-top set pieces and predictability somehow comforting too, when compared to the relative tedium of her actual job. At least, she used to. She feels a brief, woozy flutter of unease before she puts a DVD in the player: will it be different, after being there when the Triskelion fell? Is HYDRA going to fuck up this simple, stupid little joy for her?

It is a little uncomfortable at times, but to her relief, mostly the movies give her the same silly, uncomplicated pleasure. Movies impose narrative and order and sense on a reality that that doesn’t always have any of those things. Or some sense, at least. Some of these movies are admittedly lacking in sense, or a particularly convincing narrative. Still, Sharon finds that she can watch the movies’ fights and the explosions easily enough, with only a few unpleasant echoes; at worst, she’s more aware than ever of the artifice behind the movies. These explosions are carefully staged, these fights are choreographed like dances. Even the most terribly directed of action movies brings more clarity to disaster than there is in being in the thick of the smoke and gunfire and screaming.

Plus, action movies are a lot funnier when watched through the forgiving haze of alcohol.

Natasha snorts with laughter at one of the Mission Impossible movies, and Sharon thinks it’s the cutest thing she’s ever heard in her life. Sure, Sharon’s drunk, but she’s irredeemably charmed by this flushed, giggly version of Natasha. Natasha’s sense of humor is still dry and sometimes groan-worthy, sometimes grim, even when she’s drunk, but her habitual reserve has eased away some, and Sharon’s more than a little smitten now.

“Why don’t _I_ have a cool theme song?” says Natasha as the Mission Impossible theme dun-dun- _dun_ -dun-dun- _dun_ ’s all over the place. “Tony has one. He blares it out of his stupid Iron Man speakers. Even Steve has one!”

“Steve has a theme song?”

“You know, _star spangled man with a plan_ ,” sings Natasha, and she’s not exactly on key, but her husky singing voice makes Sharon squirm. “I made it his ringtone.”

“Theme song’s bad for stealth,” says Sharon. She contemplates what Natasha’s theme song would even be, but drunk or not, she has enough self-preservation not to start humming _Itsy Bitsy Spider_.

“Putting all my shit out there online is bad for stealth,” mutters Natasha, frowning.

“Nuh uh. No mopey drunk!” Sharon levers herself off the couch, and sways as the room spins. “You need more ice cream,” she says once the spinning steadies, and goes to get another pint from the freezer.

They must fall asleep on the couch some time in the small hours of the morning, because Sharon wakes up alone, half-falling off the couch, with a vicious, head-being-gently-pressed-in-a-vice kind of hangover. Before she can feel too sick, or worry about Natasha’s absence, her blurry vision makes out the bottle of Gatorade sitting on the coffee table in front of her, and a pastry bag from the bakery down the block with _THANKS :)_ and what must be Natasha’s new phone number written on it. Sharon smiles wide, pounding head and nausea forgotten for a moment.

She gropes around for her phone, which has ended up squashed between the couch cushions. The brightness of the screen makes her groan in dismay, but she soldiers through the way the terrible electronic glow makes her hangover pulse malevolently to send Natasha a single heart emoji.

 


	2. Chapter 2

After three more interviews and four grueling assessments, Sharon takes the job at the CIA. She’s not the only SHIELD refugee there, but the others are all shipped off to different departments and far-flung stations. It’s probably the CIA’s attempt at quarantining any potential HYDRA rot. She can’t blame them, even as the suspicion and condescension and sneering she’s met with in her first few weeks turn all her smiles into an I-dare-you baring of teeth.

Sharon stays in DC until SHIELD’s prepaid lease on her apartment runs out, then says goodbye to Aunt Peggy and goes wherever the CIA sends her. Which turns out to be the HYDRA-hunting beat in Europe. She’s working under a senior agent who almost definitely has orders to watch her for signs of being a HYDRA turncoat, and to pump her for information about SHIELD and/or HYDRA. She tries not to hold it against Agent Marcos. Hill had nodded approvingly when Sharon had run the assignment by her, and Marcos himself seems like the kind of steady and outwardly bland agent the CIA prizes. He may be watching Sharon’s every move for any hints of HYDRA affiliation, but he’s nice enough about it.

Sharon’s just grateful she has a chance to right some of SHIELD’s wrongs, and make her own contribution to destroying HYDRA. Even if a solid two-thirds of what she’s doing is filing reams of paperwork and making endless phone calls to every other intelligence and law enforcement agency imaginable.

“Chin up, Carter,” says Marcos when he passes her desk. She’s on day eight of submitting all the appropriate paperwork for a raid on a suspected HYDRA base in Miskolc. “Interpol assures me we’ll get to raid the base next week!” When Sharon looks up at Marcos, he rears back from the probably murderous look in her eyes and walks briskly away.

 _I bet you don’t have to do paperwork_ , Sharon texts Natasha, during a bathroom and/or sanity break.

 _That is true, I don’t_ , comes the quick reply. Then a couple minutes later, _looking for steve’s bff with him has its downsides_ , with a picture of another phone’s music player display: Tracy Chapman, Fast Car. And okay, maybe she’s a terrible person, but Sharon laughs. _Introduce him to the greatest hits of the 90s, says Sam. He needs this for cultural literacy, says Sam_. Another picture arrives, this one of the aforementioned Sam staring out a car window with a grim, pained kind of expression. _Who listens to this five times in a row, it’s the most depressing song imaginable. Steve needs THERAPY_. Sharon grins and texts back, _alright, paperwork looking a lot better now_.

When the paperwork and meetings are finally over and they have the all-clear to go into the suspected base, a SWAT team creeping in behind them, they find that someone got there before them. There’s some evidence of violence, a mess of hastily shredded documents, and lines of dust on the ground that suggest large objects have been moved and removed. And in one of the empty offices, there are three bodies, each shot neatly in the forehead.

“Not suicide,” says Marcos, as he kneels to inspect them. Sharon turns her attention to the room itself. There’s no blood splatter, so they didn’t die here. “Been dead a couple weeks, I’d guess.” He tilts one of their heads towards them with a gloved finger.

“That’s William Rauner,” says Sharon. She paces around the bodies to peer at the other faces. “And Isabel Guillem, and…Arthur Burns?” MI-6 agents strongly suspected of being HYDRA, thanks to how they dropped off the map after the Triskelion fell.

Marcos leans in closer, nose twitching with distaste. “Yeah. Arthur Burns,” he confirms. “Maybe they shouldn’t have run to avoid getting arrested, huh? MI-6’ll be happy they’re accounted for at least.”

Sharon lets Marcos poke around the bodies, and turns her attention to the only desk in the room. The desk is bare, except for the external hard drive sitting on it. The whole tableau is honestly pretty ominous. Marcos’s dark eyes brighten when Sharon draws his attention to it.

“A present?” he murmurs, and gestures for Sharon to bag it. Sharon doesn’t say _that’s a weird assumption_ , like she wants to. She’s grown used to Agent Marcos’s surprising bursts of whimsy.

Marcos turns out to be right, though. When the techs pull the data from it, it’s a treasure trove of intel on HYDRA’s operations in Europe, neatly organized. A lot of it’s out of date, but there’s enough there to keep the anti-HYDRA task forces busy for a while. Marcos figures the bodies and intel are all the work of some HYDRA defector, or someone from MI-6 wrapping up the matter off the books; either way, he doesn’t let the source trouble him too much.

“Gift horse, mouth, you know. I’ll take it.”

Sharon would have done the same, except for how it happens a few more times over the next months: empty HYDRA bases, with helpful collections of intelligence left for them to find, almost as if in apology for having gotten there before them. Sometimes there are bound and unconscious HYDRA agents, sometimes there are dead ones. The intel always checks out.

The fourth time it happens, Sharon gets a visit from Natasha.

“Winter Soldier’s been leaving you presents,” says Natasha from the backseat of Sharon’s car. Sharon’s turning with her gun out before her brain recognizes Natasha’s voice, and then she glares as she lowers the gun, heart pounding. “Steve’s going to be jealous.”

“I nearly shot you! You couldn’t give me a heads up that you’d be lurking in my car like a serial killer?”

Natasha just smiles, blinks innocently. “I texted you! A couple minutes ago.”

“I don’t get signal in the stupid parking garage. And wait, what? The Winter Soldier’s been what?”

“The empty bases and the intel dumps from the past few months. You’ve been crossing paths with the Winter Soldier. You haven’t run into him, have you?”

“No. Our mysterious helper being the Winter Soldier hasn’t even come up as a possibility. I’ve been assuming it’s a burned agent, but Marcos thinks it’s a HYDRA defector. A HYDRA defector who’s better at intel analysis and organization than, I quote, ‘this entire station, look at these beautiful spreadsheets.’ Have you run into Barnes?”

“Not yet, unfortunately. Steve is listening to sad oldies about soldiers who didn’t come home from the war now.” And blowing up every HYDRA base in his path, judging by the reports that cross Sharon’s desk, and the increasingly artsy snapchats of explosions Natasha sends her.

“My condolences. Uh, do you want to give me an update on what you guys have been up to over dinner?”

“Sure. Your place?”

“Yeah, sure,” says Sharon, and tries not to let her smile get too giddy.

Texts and the odd phone call aren’t the same as Natasha’s physical presence. She turns to start the car, risks a glance in the rear view mirror for another look at Natasha. She’s looking good, of course, her hair longer now and falling in loose auburn curls. There’s still a smile hovering around her lips, and lingering in her eyes. It deepens when she catches Sharon’s gaze, and Sharon hopes her happy blush isn’t too visible in the terrible lighting of the parking garage.

* * *

 

Sharon and Marcos run across a couple more crime scenes that have the Winter Soldier’s helpful gifts. Sharon doesn’t let on that she knows who’s leaving them: she doesn’t have concrete evidence, and she shares Natasha’s healthy paranoia about just what could happen to Barnes if he falls into the wrong hands. Better he stay free, taking out HYDRA and leaving intel-rich breadcrumbs, than end up disappeared in custody, or recaptured by some HYDRA mole.

 _If he comes in, I want the Avengers involved every step of the way_ , Natasha had said over Turkish takeout in Sharon’s apartment. _Safest for everyone that way._

 _And you don’t trust anyone else_.

 _That too, of course._ Natasha had tilted her head, and given Sharon one of her assessing looks. _You don’t have a problem with him not being tossed in prison for the rest of his life?_

_He was a prisoner of war. He was tortured and brainwashed. He’s not culpable, as far as I’m concerned._

_He’s still dangerous._

_He’s only been dangerous to HYDRA so far. He deserves a chance._ Sharon hadn’t said what he deserved a chance to do. She hadn’t been sure, still isn’t. Natasha had nodded, but something about Sharon’s answer hadn’t satisfied her, judging by the tiny furrow in her brow.

_Just—be careful. And tell me if you end up on his trail again._

Sharon ends up having little to tell Natasha, at least about Barnes anyway. Months pass without a trace of him, and Sharon figures he’s not in Europe anymore. She keeps an eye out, even though her unit has its hands full crisscrossing Europe to catch former SHIELD and other intelligence agency assets who turned out to be HYDRA. Sharon maybe takes the SHIELD traitors a little personally.

“Maybe ease up there, Carter?” suggests Marcos after she’s run one traitor down. He’s the seventh guy she’s caught this month. Idiot shouldn’t have used an old SHIELD safe house to hide out in. He definitely shouldn’t have tried to run when they paid a visit to said safe house.

“Ease up what?” pants Sharon.

“Your death grip on the secret Nazi’s throat?”

“My death grip is on his jaw, not his throat, he can breathe.”

“Not really,” wheezes the idiot HYDRA agent. Sharon ignores him.

“Don’t want him to bite down on his cyanide capsule,” she says.

“I—hrk—don’t have one!”

“Like I’ll take your word for it.”

When they get back to their own office, Marcos sidles up to her desk while Sharon’s typing up her report.

“Hey, so...good work. Seven secret Nazis this month! You’re doing great. But, and this is just a small suggestion, maybe don’t go after all these guys like you’re the one-woman mission to redeem SHIELD’s honor?”

Sharon looks up from typing her report. She makes no effort to soften the look on her face. “I’ll take that under advisement, Agent Marcos,” she says, then feels a little bad about the whole dead shark eyes thing she probably has going right now, and smiles. Marcos gives her a somewhat sickly smile back. Damn. Dimples don’t do much to offset her anger, apparently.

She frowns at her screen as she keeps typing up her report. She’s not on a one-woman mission to redeem SHIELD’s honor. She’s doing her part to clean up SHIELD’s mess, and burn off more of HYDRA’s heads. Why would Marcos even think she’s on a one-woman mission to redeem SHIELD’s honor? She’s just doing her job. And yeah, it’s a little personal, of course it is. She found out a bunch of her coworkers and colleagues were secret Nazis. Who wouldn’t take that personally? No one, she’s pretty sure.

 _Am i being too intense about catching HYDRA agents??_ she texts Natasha.

 _I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer that_ , answers Natasha. _Also define intense_.

_Caught 7 this month._

_Separately or together?_

_Separately._

_Hmm. When’s the last time you went out for a non-work thing?_

Sharon’s about to indignantly text back that she’d gone out just last week, but that was for congratulatory drinks with the team after catching the fifth HYDRA agent. That probably counted as a work thing.

 _I did some sightseeing when we were in Vienna_ , offers Sharon, wincing even as she sends the text. She has her excuses: she’s been busy, and she’s been traveling all across Europe, and she doesn’t know anyone outside of her coworkers... _When’s the last time YOU went out for a non-work thing?? And what about your try a new hobby a week thing?_

_You’re deflecting. But fair point. I’ll go out if you do. You said you like dancing._

_You joining me?_ God, flirting via text is hard. Should she add a winking smiley face? Or that leering emoji? No, too much.

 _I’m in Montana, so no._ Well, that’s a plausible reason for turning her down. Still, it stings delivered in the flat medium of text, until Natasha follows it up with, _next time we’re in the same city, i’ll take you up on it. ;)_

 _I’m going to hold you to that_ , promises Sharon.

* * *

Sharon’s team is in Berlin right now, which means she has no shortage of nightlife options. Her options for clubbing wear are grim given that she’s been living out of a suitcase for the past few months, but she scrounges a mostly appropriate outfit together, and heads out into the night. She takes a selfie before she goes, of her raising a wry and skeptical eyebrow at her reflection, and sends it to Natasha.

She spends way too long trying to come up with an explanation for why she’s going out alone, and everything she comes up with is a cover story: backpacker ditched by her friends, here on a business trip, student here for a semester abroad...she settles on the one closest to the truth: she’s traveling for work, and she doesn’t know anyone in the city.

It feels too much like a mission still: line up the cover, achieve the objective. This isn’t work, she reminds herself. This is a totally non-work thing. She can do and enjoy things that aren’t HYDRA-hunting related, right? She can have fun on her own, right? Right.

She stops at a moderately crowded bar first, and tries to relax with a couple drinks while she people-watches. Once she tones down her automatic threat assessments of every patron in the bar, it’s even fun to rubberneck at strangers’ social dynamics, to spot who’s into who, whose relationship is on the rocks, who’s uncomplicatedly happy.

Sharon’s approached by a couple of guys who gamely switch to speaking English when she fake-fumbles her way through tourist-level German, and she flirts back with them halfheartedly. She could have a one-night stand with one of them. They’re attractive enough, and neither of them say anything offensively stupid or creepy. And it’s been…way too long since Sharon’s gotten laid, not since, shit, before she got the assignment on Rogers’ detail. She’s just not feeling it with guys right now, though. Her mind keeps circling around the image of the deep curve of hips, the swell of breasts, a pair of lush and generous lips. Maybe she should have tracked down a lesbian bar.

She slips away when the latest guy to approach her heads to the bathroom. She’s not going to find what she wants here. So she leaves the bar, and finds the closest nightclub.

When she gets inside, she’s greeted with a lot of neon lights and clothes, and bright and blaring synth music. It’s 80s night apparently. Sharon grins, takes a quick blurry and dark photo and sends it to Natasha as proof, then heads straight for the dance floor.

The clubbing experience as a whole isn’t really Sharon’s scene. For her, it’s all so much distraction from the thing she really wants: the anonymous crush of bodies on the dance floor, the way everyone is subsumed into the music, the beat. The way moving her body feels, when it’s not for fitness or a fight. She gave up ballet in favor of martial arts years ago; she’d known what she wanted, even at thirteen, so she’d given up the leotards and ribbons in favor of gloves and a gi, and hadn’t looked back. She’d never been a big fan of actually performing on stage anyway. It was enough, to dance for fun in clubs and in gym classes. It’s been months since she last danced, though. She shouldn’t have left it so long.

There’s a nostalgic cheer every time the DJ transitions to the next 80s hit, and impromptu singalongs often pop up. An entire club worth of people attempting to hit the high note in “Take On Me” is simultaneously painful and hilarious, and Sharon ends up laughing in sheer delight. For just that moment, she’s helplessly fond of every single person in this club.

Sharon dances with a few people who have decidedly more enthusiasm than skill, and one guy who tries to grind with her during “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” Talk about songs that you shouldn’t attempt to grind to. Sharon eels away from the guy and loses him by taking the long way around to the club’s bar, where she orders a water. It was a good idea coming here tonight, she thinks, as she surveys the happily flailing and gyrating crowd on the dance floor. She’s pleasantly sweaty and her muscles feel loose and buzzing. Right now, she feels like she could dance until last call, and after it even, she feels like she could make up for that too-long stretch of time when she’d stupidly let this go by just dancing until she drops. She downs her bottle of water, and heads back onto the dance floor.

Excitement audibly ripples through the crowd when Prince’s “Kiss” starts up. Sharon grins and keeps her body moving. She meets eyes with a petite, dark-haired woman who smiles and makes her way over to Sharon. They dance together for the length of the song, close and not too dirty, but the promise in the easy way they move together makes Sharon’s pulse kick up. Or maybe that’s just the way the woman is biting her pink lower lip. Sweat makes the woman’s brown skin dewy, and the sway of her hips demands Sharon rest her hands on them.

They dance through another song together, then the woman gets up on her tiptoes to bring her lips to Sharon’s ear. “Can I buy you a drink?”

Sharon smiles and nods, and takes her hand to lead them to the bar. The woman introduces herself as Sonia, and after a split second of deliberation, Sharon leans in close and says, “I’m Kate.”

Sonia tips her head and grins. “American?”

“Is my German that bad?” she asks in English. She knows it is, on purpose. Sharon’s German is flawless, but Kate is just here for work, and her German is serviceable at best.

“Not so bad! How’s my English?” asks Sonia.

“Pretty good.”

They flirt and chat over their drinks, pressed in close together under the guise of being heard over the music and din of the club. Sonia has a sly smile and a sparkle in her brown eyes, and if that reminds Sharon of someone else, that’s her business. It doesn’t matter anyway. Natasha’s out of her reach in more ways than one. So when Sonia leans in to tuck an errant strand of Sharon’s hair back behind her ear, Sharon closes the distance between them and kisses her.

* * *

When she wakes up the next morning in Sonia’s bed, she has texts and photos from Natasha waiting for her: _looking good ;)_ in response to Sharon’s selfie, then a photo of Natasha in a pair of gratifyingly tight jeans and boots and, ha, a cowboy hat. _Line dancing appears to be my only option out here._ The next photo is absolutely priceless: a bearded Rogers bedecked in flannel, glowering at the camera, and Wilson with an arm thrown around him, grinning wide. _Look who I dragged with me!_ The last message from Natasha is a grainy few seconds of video, showing Natasha flushed and laughing, and line dancing pretty expertly, as far as Sharon can tell.

Sharon leaves Sonia with thanks for a great night and a kiss, then heads back to her own sublet. Natasha calls her just as she’s opening the door.

“Had a fun night?” asks Natasha. Sharon can hear noise in the background, laughter and talking.

“Jesus, what time is it over there?”

“Last call. So, fun night?”

“Yeah. Had a few drinks, danced.” She bites her lip and taps a finger against her phone. She’s pretty sure Natasha doesn’t even know Sharon’s not straight. Sharon hasn’t found a way to bring it up, apart from all the flirting and a few oblique hints, that is. And so long as she never brought it up, she could live in the grey maybe-space where anything was possible. But she’s going to have to say something if she ever wants this to go somewhere. “Met a pretty girl. You?”

“Learned how to line dance, and maybe more entertainingly, watched Steve try to learn how to line dance. Hang on a sec,” she says, and the background noise fades away. “A pretty girl, huh?”

“Uh huh. Been a while since I had a one-night stand, and it was—good,” she says, because it had been, a fun, no-expectations kind of fuck. “But I told her my name was Kate.”

Natasha lets out a small huff of laughter. “I went by Sheila tonight.” There’s a muffled shout. “I gotta go. I’m glad you had fun.” Natasha’s voice is hoarse, but so warm, and so close, with the phone right up against Sharon’s ear like this. It’s almost enough to fool her body into thinking Natasha’s here with her.

“Me too,” says Sharon, and hopes Natasha hears the truth of it. “Good night.”

“‘Night.”

* * *

Sharon ends up glad she took the chance for a night out, because her team ends up getting even busier. Marcos uses some of the intel they’ve collected thanks to Barnes to put together a team to go after HYDRA cells in Sokovia. The run-up to what’s going to be a stint undercover to infiltrate one of those cells takes up all of Sharon’s time, and most of her attention. 

Sharon surfaces from mission prep to call Aunt Peggy, and then Natasha before she has to go dark to go undercover. Aunt Peggy is vague and confused over the phone, so Sharon gives up on trying to explain her new assignment to her, and just lets her talk. There’s not much else she can do. She has the awful feeling that Aunt Peggy won’t remember her, the next time Sharon sees her. Sharon can’t even let herself think that there might not be a next time.

She calls Natasha next, and gives her just enough detail to ensure neither of them get a nasty surprise if they run into each other mid-op, then asks after how Natasha’s end of the HYDRA-and-Winter-Soldier hunt is going.

“Fine on the HYDRA end, not so fine on the Winter Soldier end. There hasn’t been a trace of Barnes for months. Steve’s…not dealing with it so great.” Sharon’s about to ask what Natasha means by that, but Natasha barrels on. “Anyway, don’t worry about that. Congrats on this assignment, the CIA must be sure you’re not HYDRA now if they’re sending you in undercover.”

“Thanks. I’m just glad to avoid paperwork for a while,” demurs Sharon, trying not to sound too excited. An assignment like this is probably no big deal to Natasha, but it’s the most challenging one Sharon’s gotten yet. She doesn’t want to fuck it up.

“You’ll do great,” says Natasha, her voice low and sincere.

“Hope so.” Sharon bites her lip, considers and discards half a dozen different ways to say _I want to see you in person, it’s been too long, is it weird if I miss you_ and maybe even _this crush I have is not going away._ She settles on the very vague, “See you in a few months?”

“Yeah. I’ll look forward to it.”

* * *

Sharon’s role in the Sokovian op goes off without a hitch. It takes five long months, but she establishes herself in the cell, gathers all the intel she can on still-active HYDRA cells in Eastern Europe, then calls in her team to bust the whole cell before HYDRA can execute an attack on Sokovia’s capital city. The cleanup and debriefs after that are honestly more brutal than the undercover assignment itself, cover job as a barista included.

When she’s finally done debriefing what feels like all of Interpol and the World Security Council, Marcos gives her a congratulatory handshake and smile, and says, “Great work, Carter. You’re wanted back at Langley.”

“What, for more debriefs?”

He shrugs. “Probably. But also a new assignment. It’s been a pleasure working with you, Agent Carter. You’re welcome on my team any time.”

So Sharon says her goodbyes, packs her shit, and heads back to DC. On the way to the airport, she texts and calls a bunch of people to let them know she’s not dead, Natasha included.

Natasha texts back immediately. _So, some stuff happened while you were undercover._ Sharon’s stomach sort of clenches and sinks at the same time. _Good stuff or bad stuff?_ There hadn’t been any Avengers-related global disasters while she’d been in Sokovia, so the world isn’t ending, probably. _Barnes came in. And don’t be mad, but Fury and Hill and me maybe sort of arranged it so that your new assignment is being on his detail. Sorry, I’d explain more, but I’m mid-op, g2g!_ And then no more texts from Natasha.

What the fuck.

* * *

She has one free day before she’s scheduled for her debriefs and meetings at Langley, so she crashes at a hotel and tries to get someone to tell her what the hell is going on. Natasha’s gone dark, so no joy there, but she does get a hold of Maria Hill. 

“Take the assignment,” says Hill. She sounds harried, but not grim. The twist of worry in Sharon’s stomach eases some. “You’re the best of a lot of bad options, so I’m sorry, I know it’s not ideal, but please, for everyone’s sake, take the assignment. Barnes isn’t Winter Soldiering it up, so you don’t have to worry about that. Natasha will fill you all in when she gets back next week.”

Sharon wishes she had Rogers’ number right about now. Maybe she could get much needed detail from him. Lacking any other options, she combs through the news, but there’s nothing about Barnes or the Winter Soldier, so whatever’s going on, it’s still being kept quiet. She’s just going to have to wait until tomorrow. In the meantime, she goes to visit Aunt Peggy.

“She’s getting pretty fragile,” says Jenny at the front desk. “And she’s not having a very good memory day. But go on ahead and see her. She’ll be glad of the company at least.”

Aunt Peggy doesn’t recognize her. Sharon blames jet lag for the way she wants to burst into tears. She’d wanted to talk over the Sokovia mission with Aunt Peggy, trade stories about undercover operations. She’d wanted to tell Aunt Peggy _the work I did directly saved thousands of lives_. She’d wanted to tell her _even without SHIELD, it’s okay, I’m doing the work I wanted to do._ But she can’t tell Aunt Peggy any of that if Aunt Peggy thinks she’s just some stranger. She stays anyway, because Jenny’s right, Aunt Peggy seems to at least appreciate the company. When the conversation stalls into repetitive circles, Sharon grabs the book on Aunt Peggy’s nightstand.

“How about I read to you, Aunt—Ms. Peggy? Is that alright?”

“Oh, that would be lovely, dear. My eyes get so tired lately.”

The book is a nicely bound hardcover of _A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_ , and there’s a bookmark tucked in it about a third of the way through. Maybe Rogers had brought it for Aunt Peggy. Sharon opens it up and starts reading. She’s about fifteen pages in when Aunt Peggy gets restless and calls for one of the aides to come help her to the bathroom, and it takes a few minutes before she’s settled back in her bed.

“Who brought you this book, do you know?” asks Sharon as the aide fusses with the pillows.

“Oh, Bucky did.” Sharon freezes. “He has a lovely reading voice.”

“Bucky? Bucky Barnes?”

Aunt Peggy hums a yes. “It was so nice to see him again…Will you keep reading, please?”

“Of course, just a sec.”

Sharon uses one finger to keep her place in the book, then flips to the front. There’s a handwritten note on the inside of the front cover: _Pegs, I promised I’d get you a copy that wasn’t all torn up and covered in mud, so here it is. I’m only sorry it took so long. JBB._

Clearly, Sharon’s missed a lot since she went undercover.

* * *

When Sharon gets the file for her new assignment, she has a moment of deja vu. She’ll be in Dupont Circle again, living across the hall from Captain America aka Steve Rogers. She’s to provide security and light surveillance. But unlike the last time, she’s not on Rogers’ detail. She’s on the Winter Soldier’s. 

The Winter Soldier aka Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes is living with Rogers, and Colonel Rhodes’ interagency anti-HYDRA task force would very much like to make sure HYDRA doesn’t get its hands on Barnes again while he’s providing all the intelligence he can against HYDRA. The mission file is light on detail, and Sharon recognizes the tell-tale signs of a briefing redacted to near-uselessness to pass muster for lower security clearances. Natasha had told her far more about the Winter Soldier over alcohol and ice cream.

Sharon carefully doesn’t let that show when she meets with the deputy director of the CIA about the assignment.

It’s a short meeting: she gets some perfunctory if sincere praise for the Sokovia op, then the deputy director asks if she’ll take the assignment on Barnes’ detail.

“Captain Rogers knows who I am, sir. I won’t be able to maintain a cover on this assignment. Will that be a problem?”

“That’s a selling point, believe it or not.” The deputy director sighs and leans back in his chair. ”Let me be frank, Carter. What this assignment comes down to is that, for a variety of political, diplomatic, and national security reasons, the Winter Soldier is a hot potato no agency wants to be left holding. Having a CIA agent assigned to keep an eye on him is the compromise we’ve managed to reach. So, will you accept the assignment?” His tone is flat and even, but a muscle near the deputy director’s left eye twitches.

She wants to ask what happens if she doesn’t accept the assignment. But Hill asked her to take this assignment, and Natasha arranged for it. They wouldn’t do that without a damned good reason. And this is Bucky Barnes they’re talking about, the same Bucky Barnes from Aunt Peggy’s stories, the same Bucky Barnes who, months after escaping HYDRA, left her team helpful, neat collections of intelligence that made an op that saved thousands of lives possible. And this is the Bucky Barnes who brought Aunt Peggy a gift to keep a decades-old promise, and sat and read it to her.

The file she’s been given doesn’t say any of that. It just says he’s _stable and cooperative_ , and that the Winter Soldier is a _dangerous but potentially valuable asset_.

Sharon had told Natasha that Barnes deserved a chance. Will he get one, if someone else is on this detail? All this vague talk of politics and national security and unspecified compromises prickles at her intuition.

“I accept the assignment, sir.”

The deputy director looks distinctly relieved, tension dropping from his shoulders.

“Good. You’ll have the full details in a couple hours.” He gets up to see her out of his office, and stops her before she can open the door. “Just stick it out on this detail, Carter. Keep things nice and quiet.” He says this with a meaningful look that Sharon can’t quite decipher. “Eventually the task force will either cut Barnes loose, or have him join up, and then you’ll have your pick of assignments.”

* * *

Sharon moves into her new CIA-provided apartment while Rogers and Barnes are out, so she gets to put off the inevitable awkwardness of talking to Rogers again for another few hours. The apartment is already furnished, unobjectionably enough in the finest IKEA has to offer, so once she puts away her meager personal possessions, she has nothing to do but review the surveillance setup and worry about how this is going to go.  

She makes a thorough survey of the building first: two stories, four units, the two second-story units empty, until or unless the CIA puts any other assets it wants to keep an eye on in them. Bland IKEA furniture aside, this place is nicer than anything Sharon could probably afford herself. It doesn’t have that unavoidable worn-in feel of most rental units. Everything’s got a fresh coat of paint, the flooring is all spotless, the appliances all shiny and new. It’s a better class of safe house, one meant for VIPs. Sharon knows from experience that they’re not all like this. So someone wants to be on Rogers’ and/or Barnes’ good side, or maybe this place is courtesy of Tony Stark.

The surveillance is limited to the halls and exterior of the building, nothing in the Rogers-Barnes apartment itself, due to _Captain Rogers’ objections and [REDACTED]_ according to her briefing. Sharon’s relieved, honestly, even if it does make her job harder. This is going to be awkward enough without her getting a front seat to their private lives.

 _Natasha arranged for this_ , she tells herself. _Natasha and Hill and Fury picked you for this. It’ll be fine._

But god does she wish Natasha were here to fill her in right now. The “full details” the deputy director had promised hadn’t been very full at all. She’d expected something more than “keep an eye on Barnes, submit daily logs,” but that’s what the assignment boils down to. Even worse, the briefing hadn’t said a thing about what she could expect from Barnes. “Stable and cooperative,” sure, but does he remember his past? Is he going to be anything like the Bucky Barnes that Aunt Peggy had told her about? The book he’d apparently given to Aunt Peggy is a good sign. She hopes.

The biggest saving grace of the assignment so far is that Sharon has backup, for the security portion of her duties anyway: the anti-HYDRA task force has placed two teams, one at each end of the block, in case of a HYDRA assault on Rogers or Barnes. But Sharon is it for surveillance, at least according to what the CIA’s told her.

 _I just moved in across from Rogers and Barnes, give me something to go on here. My briefing was basically worthless_ , she texts Natasha. She stares at her phone for a few minutes, but there’s no response. Fuck it, she can’t just pace in here like a crazy person. She goes out to introduce herself to the task force’s security teams.

Once the introductions are made and the logistics covered, she asks them, “Anything else I should know about? My briefing was pretty light on detail.”

Agent Ford, the team’s commander, shrugs. “We’ve stopped a handful of HYDRA incursions before they could get to Cap and Barnes’ place. Everything usually stays pretty quiet over there. We’re supposed to be pretty hands-off though. I, uh, get the impression Cap’s not a fan of being surveilled.”

“Yeah, I got that impression too.”

“Good luck,” he offers, which definitely doesn’t make her feel better.

She does get an answer from Natasha by the time she gets back to her apartment though. _I haven’t spent much time with Barnes yet. He seemed polite and professional. But I mean, I was polite and professional a lot when I first came in too, soooo…not sure that means much. He got the “sane enough” stamp of approval from Wilson._

_Any tips???_

_Clint basically treated me like a feral cat when he was my SHIELD minder. Seems to have worked, tbh_

Sharon laughs. _Okay, leave out cans of tuna for him, got it._

* * *

When Barnes and Rogers finally arrive, Sharon steels herself and waits outside her apartment door to greet them.

“Captain Rogers, Sergeant Barnes. I’m Agent Sharon Carter, and I’ve been assigned to your security detail.”

Rogers clenches his jaw, and his nostrils flare. For a second, Sharon panics. Surely someone’s told Rogers to expect this. If she has to break it to him—

“Yes, we’ve been expecting you. Though I’ve told everyone who’ll listen that this isn’t necessary. I don’t object to the task force teams stationed down the block, but Buck and I are more than capable of handling any threats that make it to our apartment. And furthermore, I know this is just a thin excuse to maintain surveillance on Bucky—”

Barnes cuts Rogers off. “You’re Peggy’s grand niece, right? Pegs has told us so much about you, it’s great to finally meet you,” says Barnes with a polite smile, and he offers his hand for a handshake.

Sharon smiles back, with dimples, and throws herself on the social nicety Barnes has just offered like it’s a piece of meat and she’s a starving dog. If small talk can make this situation any less horribly awkward, she’ll engage in as much small talk as she has to, and gratefully.

“You too, Sergeant Barnes.”

She studies Barnes in the brief moment they shake hands, and he studies her right back. He’s dressed in unremarkable dark clothes, and he looks around five or so years older than the wartime photos of him. His hair is longish, falling past his ears where it’s swept back, and he looks tan and healthy, apart from the dark circles under his eyes. His grip on her hand is firm and warm, but when she glances down, she sees that the bones of his wrist are too prominent for a man of his size. So, healthy enough, apart from maybe being underweight.

“Thank you for the book you left with Aunt Peggy, she seems to really be enjoying it,” she says as she pulls her hand back.

Barnes’ smile deepens to something more genuine now, fine lines creasing around his eyes. “I’m glad. You saw her recently? How is she?”

They go back and forth like that for a couple minutes, while Rogers simmers with indignation. Soon enough, his patience snaps.

“Are we just going to pretend that all this is normal? You spied on me for a year! You told me your name was _Kate_!”

Barnes frowns over at Rogers. “Steve, don’t be an asshole. She was just doing her job.”

“I did my best to preserve your privacy, Captain Rogers.”

“There were _bugs_ in my apartment,” retorts Rogers.

“Yes, but I relied in large part on the exterior surveillance. I didn’t spy on you in your own home any more than was absolutely necessary to maintain your safety.”

Rogers crosses his arms, unconvinced. Barnes rolls his eyes.

“C’mon, Steve. What, you embarrassed she caught you singing in the shower?”

“I didn’t need a security detail! All due respect, Agent—” he stops, swallows hard. “Agent Carter, but I am more than capable of handling any threats on my own.”

“Oh, I’m sure you are, Captain Rogers. But you sure as hell didn’t catch any of the 27 security threats that I stopped before you could ever even notice them. Including the five-man strike team from Latveria who were here to kidnap you.”

Barnes’ eyebrows go up, and Rogers shakes his head. “That’s not possible. I would have noticed.”

Sharon lifts her chin and meets Rogers’ eyes. “It’s possible. You didn’t notice because I am just that good.”

Barnes grins at her, wide and delighted. It makes him look about ten years younger. Sharon orders herself sternly not to blush, or smile back at him, no matter how cute he looks. _He is an assassin, Carter_ , she tells herself. Her brain traitorously flashes an image of Natasha in her mind’s eye, as if to say, _assassins can be cute_.

“I like you,” says Barnes, with every evidence of sincerity, then turns to Rogers. “Steve, I like her. Get over yourself and be neighborly. We’re all stuck with each other for now, might as well make the best of it.”

Rogers’ hackles start to go down, and he visibly softens at the sight of Barnes’ smile. He finally offers Sharon his hand, and Sharon shakes it.

“I’m still not happy about this. But—Natasha said you’re alright. So alright.” Barnes elbows Rogers. “Ouch! What?” hisses Rogers, and Barnes glares meaningfully. “What!”

Barnes gives up on nonverbal communication and turns to Sharon. “Oh my—he’s the worst, I’m sorry. He’s sorry for being an asshole too, I promise.” Rogers turns hilariously red and closes his eyes in apparent mortification, but he does nod in agreement.

“I’m going to go—not be here. We’ll see you tomorrow, Agent. Um. Agent Carter,” says Rogers, then goes into his apartment.

Barnes lingers for a moment longer, and Sharon wonders if the pleasant courtesy from earlier is about to fall away to reveal the Winter Soldier. But no, Barnes just says, “Thank you. For keeping him safe,” gives her one last shy smile, and goes inside.

 _So that went better than expected_ , she thinks.

* * *

The first few days on Barnes and Rogers’ detail are suspiciously boring, and very awkward. Barnes runs out of polite, impersonal small talk by the end of the car ride to the Pentagon on the first day, and Rogers is not willing to pick up the slack. He’s not unkind, and Barnes always greets her warmly enough, but Sharon’s the third wheel who’s reporting back to the CIA, and that knowledge looms uncomfortably in all their stilted silences. 

Not that Sharon has anything to report. Rogers and Barnes spend their days going from one secure, vetted location to another, and she has no idea what they do in their apartment. It’s not like she _wants_ to violate their privacy. It’s just that her mission brief said security and surveillance, and yet her surveillance is limited to all the entrances and exits to their apartment. If she’s supposed to be making sure the Winter Soldier’s not a threat, it doesn’t give her a lot to work with. She stares at her meager reports and fights off the sinking feeling that she’s doing the equivalent of turning in a school essay that’s fallen woefully short of the required minimum page length.

Still, she dutifully keeps an eye on all the security feeds for the building, but with the other two teams stationed on the block, there’s not much chance of any hostiles getting through. The most exciting thing that happens in the first few days is a flock of pigeons setting off the proximity alarms on the roof.

By the fifth day, Sharon realizes this assignment is about a half-step up from desk duty. Any warm body could do it. Hell, a reasonably intelligent robot could do it. Either she’s missing something, or Sharon’s just here to be here, not to do anything, and now she understands why Natasha had said _don’t be mad_. This is a goddamn waste of her skills.

After a week, Natasha shows up at Sharon’s door, as promised. She has some bandages peeking out from under her shirt sleeves, but her hair is perfect, and she greets Sharon with a slow, almost shy smile that Sharon returns. Sharon knows this is mostly a professional visit, and she wants to be annoyed about her current pointless assignment. Her brain should tell that to the happy and nervous flutters in her stomach though. They’re just happy to see Natasha.

“Long time no see,” says Natasha. “Congrats on the Sokovia op.”

“Thanks. You gonna tell me what the hell’s going on now?”

Natasha lifts up the grocery bag she’s holding. “Yup. And I even brought ice cream cake that we are not going to share with the super soldiers across the hall.”

“How bad is this going to be if we’re upgrading from ice cream to ice cream cake?” asks Sharon as she lets Natasha in. “And are you okay? Looks like you got a little banged up.”

“I’m fine, just cut it a little too close with an explosion. And this isn’t going to be too bad, but I figure I’ve got some groveling to do,” says Natasha with an apologetic grimace.

“I’ll take an explanation over groveling. Is this assignment a cover for something else, or what? Because as far as I can tell, I’m useless here.”

Natasha heads for the bare kitchen table, where she opens up the cakebox. The cake is colored in lurid pink and purple, and says HAPPY BIRTHDAY. Sharon raises an eyebrow as she passes a spoon over to Natasha.

“The grocery store had limited options,” says Natasha. “And yeah, this assignment is sort of cover for something else. Let me catch you up on what you missed while you were in Sokovia.”

Sharon digs into the ice cream cake, and listens. Natasha gives her a rundown on the current status of wiping out HYDRA first, and that’s all going about as well as expected, if not a little better, even. HYDRA’s definitely on the retreat, starved of both human and financial resources, its organization in shambles.

“Down side to that is that various HYDRA cells are joining up with whatever other terrorists will have them,” says Natasha.

“Yeah, that was definitely the case in Sokovia.”

“How was that, by the way? Sokovia, I mean.”

“It was good. Challenging, but good. Not sure I want to be on any undercover ops that are more long-term than that though,” admits Sharon. Aunt Peggy not recognizing her on her return had shaken her.

“Well, I promise you’ll have your pick of assignments once all this is over.”

“About that. What, exactly, is all this?”

Natasha winces. “How much do you want to know about the political, diplomatic, and interagency shitshow surrounding the Winter Soldier?”

“Start with Barnes, go from there. Last you told me, he’d dropped off the radar. What happened?”

“He dropped off the radar and stayed off the radar until a couple months ago, when he walked off a Wakandan royal jet at Dulles and asked to see Colonel Rhodes.”

“Wakanda? What do they have to do with anything?”

Sharon doesn’t know much about Wakanda, but then, no one really does. They’ve been staunchly isolationist until fairly recently, and as far as Sharon knows, they’re just a poor African country that’s held off all colonial incursions thanks to geography and being resource-poor. There’s certainly no HYDRA activity that she’s aware of there, so why would Barnes be anywhere near Wakanda? Plus it isn’t as if Barnes could disappear there, standing out like he would as one of the undoubtedly few white men in the entire country. Sharon goes for another bite of ice cream cake while her brain spins through attempts to connect “Winter Soldier” and “Wakanda.”

“Apparently, while all of us were running all over the globe looking for him, and Steve was worried he was dead, Barnes was in Wakanda as a guest of Prince T’Challa.”

Sharon freezes as she tries to process this information, then hastily swallows her next mouthful of ice cream cake. “What.”

“Yeah.”

“Uh, a guest, or, y’know, a _guest_ who couldn’t leave his holding cell?”

“Actual guest. Barnes seems to have done Wakanda some unspecified favor, got injured in the process, and was a guest of Wakanda while he recuperated. He says he’s got most of his memories back, and that he’s, and I quote, ‘free of HYDRA’s bullshit.’”

“You believe him?”

Natasha shrugs. “Steve does. And I’ve met the Winter Soldier. The guy who turned himself in, that’s not the Winter Soldier. There’s something fishy about the Wakanda story, but it’s to do with Wakanda, not Barnes himself,” says Natasha, waving her spoon dismissively. She takes another bite of the ice cream cake, then says, “You know, I had plans and contingency plans and contingency plans for those contingency plans, and Barnes just showing up with a ton of HYDRA intel and handing himself over to the Pentagon was not at all part of any of them.”

“You trust Rhodes, though, right? If there was ever any way for Barnes to come in—totally on the level and out in the open, I mean—Rhodes is it.”

Sharon had given some thought to the matter herself when her team kept running into Barnes’ helpful presents, just in case she was ever in the position to bring Barnes in. If she hadn’t been able to get a hold of Natasha, Sharon’s next choice would have been getting Barnes to Rhodes and his task force. Rhodes’ character is unimpeachable and he’s the public face of the government’s anti-HYDRA efforts, plus, she’s sure he’d treat Barnes fairly instead of shooting first and asking questions later.

“Yeah, I trust Rhodey. And you’re not wrong. That was exactly what Barnes thought too. Plus something about doing the right thing, not wanting to be on the run for his whole life, blah blah blah.”

“Little things,” teases Sharon, and Natasha rolls her eyes but smiles a little too.

“It’s just that this would have all been a hell of a lot easier if Barnes had just gone to Steve. I had a safe house set up for them, fake papers, a fake death for the Winter Soldier, a goddamn team of trustworthy shrinks...and it would have all been off any official radar, and all this politics and bureaucracy shit could have been avoided.”

Natasha stabs her spoon at the ice cream cake and eats her cake with frown. Sharon can’t help but smile.

“Sounds like a good plan. But you know, sometimes it’s worth doing things out in the open. Like dumping all of SHIELD’s files on the internet, or testifying in front of Congress...”

Natasha glares. “Whatever. It’s goddamn inconvenient. It’s why you’re on this sham assignment.”

“Yeah, maybe explain that a bit more.”

Natasha gives Sharon the long version of the unhelpful answer Sharon had gotten from the deputy director of the CIA, with all the gory, interagency squabbling details he’d omitted.

“So it really does just boil down to how the Winter Soldier’s a hot potato no one wants to be left holding,” says Sharon. Natasha raises her eyebrow in silent question. “That’s what the deputy director of the CIA told me.”

“Basically. Plus, Steve went full crazy eyes and effectively blackmailed the US government. Anything happens to Barnes, and he goes public about how the US government murdered or disappeared American war hero and longest-held prisoner of war Bucky Barnes.”

“Oh my god.”

“Honestly, I’m kind of proud of him. Didn’t know he had it in him. Anyway, Rhodey’s personally vetted everyone on the security teams on your block. But we still had to get surveillance down from colonoscopy-level close, to one agent from the CIA.”

“Me,” says Sharon and Natasha nods. “How the hell did you manage that?”

“Well, Steve yelled a lot, some lawyers got involved, also a couple Senate subcommittees...probably best if you don’t know anything beyond that. The upshot is Fury and I _do_ want eyes on Barnes—”

“Just not any random agent from the NSA or CIA or whatever.”

Sharon gets it now. This really is a lot like being on Rogers’ detail, only with higher stakes. Rogers, after all, hadn’t been in danger of being imprisoned or killed by his own government, or of possibly being a still-brainwashed assassin. Yeah, alright, maybe this assignment is worth her skills after all.

Natasha points her ice cream laden spoon at Sharon. “Exactly. I don’t want anyone to find some excuse to disappear Barnes, and some random agent might give some random agency that excuse.” Now Natasha looks down at the melting ruin they’ve made of the ice cream cake. “You said he deserves a chance, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well then he deserves at least as much of a chance as I got. This is the best I can manage.”

“Hey, your best is looking pretty great to me.” Natasha smiles. “So, am I here entirely for show, or is there something else I should be doing?”

Natasha shakes her head. “Just submit your reports like you have been, and like you did when you were on Steve’s detail. This’ll take a few months, tops, and then Barnes’ll be cut loose, hopefully. Also, maybe keep an eye on Barnes to make sure he’s not secretly planning to kill us all because he’s still brainwashed.”

“Right. Got it.”

* * *

Natasha goes across the hall to give Rogers and Barnes their own update, while Sharon works on the day’s report. Natasha visiting Rogers and Barnes is the most noteworthy event she’s put in one of these things all week. She’s checking on the building security feeds and idly considering whether she should bother to pad her report out with useless detail when a knock on the door startles her. She toggles to the camera feed outside her door: it’s Rogers. He aims a wry salute at the camera, a charming, crooked smile on his lips. Sharon suppresses a smile of her own and goes to get the door. 

“What can I do for you, Captain Rogers?” she asks.

“It’s come to my attention that we started off on the wrong foot last week. Natasha’s made it clear we’re on the same team.”

“We’ve always been on the same team, Captain Rogers.”

He winces, nods. “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t take the whole surveillance thing well. But I know you’re here for the right reasons. So.” Rogers stops, shifts his weight from foot to foot. “Come over for dinner? Buck cooked, so it’ll actually be good.”

It would take a stronger person than Sharon to resist the big-eyed, earnest look Rogers gives her. She’s not actually hungry, given the ice cream cake from earlier, but no way is she going to refuse Rogers’ gesture.

“Sure, I’d love to,” she says, and follows Rogers across the hall. When she gets a whiff of the scent of a rich roast of some kind, she thinks, _okay, maybe I’m a little hungry_. Ice cream cake is basically a liquid, right?

The apartment is disconcertingly similar to hers until she spots the differences: more lived-in clutter, more books, a few blankets folded neatly on the couches and armchair. It’s a larger unit, too, the kitchen less cramped. Rogers and Barnes are clearly making some effort to make the space their own.

Natasha’s perched on a stool at the kitchen’s small breakfast bar, watching Barnes make dinner. Barnes turns to greet Sharon.

“Hey Agent Carter, hope pot roast is okay with you?”

“Sure, it smells great. And call me Sharon, please. Both of you.”

“Then you can stop with the Captain Rogers business. Just Steve is fine.”

“And you can call me Bucky,” says Barnes, shooting her a quick smile over his shoulder before he returns his attention to whatever he’s messing with on the stove. Sharon joins Natasha at the breakfast bar, and accepts the beer Rogers— _or Steve, think of him as Steve_ —-offers her with thanks.

“So, a nice dinner, everyone on first name terms...this is better, right? I think it’s better,” says Natasha.

“It’s better,” concedes Steve. “Sharon, this isn’t going to get you in hot water with the CIA, is it?”

Sharon shrugs. “Don’t think so. I’m not meant to be maintaining a cover, and I’ve got alerts set up for the exterior surveillance. Now that I’ve got the full picture, I’m pretty sure my main role here is to keep things ‘nice and quiet.’”

They all chat about mutual acquaintances and the latest developments in the HYDRA hearings, like this is a normal dinner party full of normal people, and not two former assassins, Captain America, and a CIA agent. Maybe it’s just the smell of home-cooked food in the air talking, but it’s all more comfortable, more homey, than Sharon had expected.

Soon enough, Bucky declares dinner ready and he and Steve bring the food to the kitchen table. It’s simple food, just a roast with some vegetables and potatoes on the side, a salad, bread from the good bakery a few blocks away, and it all tastes good enough that Sharon determinedly makes room for it, ice cream cake or no ice cream cake.

After the requisite compliments, they eat in appreciative silence for a couple minutes, until Natasha fixes her attention on Bucky.

“How are you doing, Barnes?”

He raises an eyebrow. “Fine. How are you?”

“Still dealing with the bullshit the Red Room left me with, and it’s been ten years since I got out. Did you know, sometimes I still think I should be locked up at night? Can’t fall asleep unless I am. So. How are you _doing_ , Barnes?”

Steve’s fork stops on the way to his mouth, and Sharon’s hand freezes mid-reaching for her glass of water. Natasha’s admission, if it’s true and not an interrogation tactic, demands some sort of response, but she’s obviously angling for something specific from Bucky, so no matter how much Sharon wants to tell Natasha _I’m sorry_ or _I’m glad you helped burn the Red Room down_ , she stays silent, and keeps her focus on Bucky.

Bucky takes Natasha’s confession/interrogation with equanimity, but there’s an edge to his voice when he says, “Oh, you want to know how fucked up I am. Pretty fucked up, but functional. That’s me and my therapist’s business though, not yours.”

Natasha turns to Steve, who slowly puts his fork down in response. “That an accurate assessment, Steve?” 

“...yes?” he hazards.

“You don’t sound sure about that.”

Bucky rolls his eyes and keeps eating.

“Just, uh, he’s not eating as much as he should? Or sleeping well.”

“Hey, have you heard this great 21st century saying, Steve? Snitches get stitches,” says Bucky with a sharp smile. “And loss of appetite and trouble sleeping are totally reasonable reactions to my anxiety about this whole turning myself in situation,” he continues, as if he were quoting someone. His therapist, probably.

She and Natasha exchange a quick glance. Yeah, that’s fair enough.

“Hmm.” Natasha takes a sip of her water and narrows her eyes at Bucky. “Could’ve avoided that if you’d come to me and done this quietly. I had such a nice safe house set up for you, new identities…”

Bucky saws at his roast with more vehemence than the tender meat requires. “Then I’d just have permanent anxiety about getting caught, and Steve would have to ditch his entire life. No, I told you, I did this for a reason. And hey, if we’re going to have trauma sharing time, how are _you_ doing, Steve?”

Sharon’s given up on eating. This is way too interesting. She shoots another quick glance at Natasha, who’s watching Steve and Bucky avidly. Natasha definitely tossed that conversational grenade earlier for a reason.

“What do you mean, how am I doing? I’m doing great. I’ve got you back, we’re making real progress against HYDRA…”

Bucky narrows his eyes in suspicion, and turns to Sharon. She only just stifles her reflex to startle. “Sharon, you watched him for a year, is Steve doing great?” Bucky fixes his expectant and frankly a little dangerous-looking blue-gray eyes on her.

“I’ve been in Sokovia for the past few months, so…”

“While you were watching him last year though. How was he doing?”

“Buck!” hisses Steve.

“Uh, I’m not sure I should—”

“Yeah Sharon, how was he doing?” Natasha rests her chin in her hand and widens her eyes a little at Sharon. Sharon thinks that look means _follow my lead._ Or maybe it means _time to make up a perimeter breach and flee the apartment_. Sharon’s hoping for the latter, but the press of Natasha’s small, booted foot on hers under the table suggests otherwise, so she answers the question.

“He was grieving. Which I figured was normal, given the circumstances.”

“Yeah, Buck. I was grieving. I was grieving _you_ , for god’s sake. I was sad, but—”

Bucky ignores Steve. “He was wallowing, wasn’t he. Doing that thing, where he shuts himself away and tries to tough it out alone—”

“I don’t do that, and if I did, who exactly was I supposed to—”

Why has Natasha done this to her, oh my god, she’d hoped to avoid getting an awkward front seat to Captain America and the Winter Soldier’s personal life, not get tossed right into the middle of it. Natasha is apparently happy to let this play out, presumably because she’s getting some sort of intelligence out of it, or maybe she’s just a sadist, who knows. Sharon doesn’t care. _Think, Carter, think._

“You did kind of wallow, Steve,” is what Sharon ends up saying, in the hopes of short-circuiting this budding argument. “You listened to ‘How to Disappear Completely’ like thirty times in a row.”

Steve and Bucky’s attention pivots to her. “What’s that?” asks Bucky.

“A song by Radiohead,” supplies Natasha. “It’s super depressing. Really, Steve? Thirty times?”

“It’s a good song!”

Bucky whips out his phone and looks it up. The song starts playing, sounding ghostly through the phone speakers.

“Jesus christ, Rogers, it’s some guy wailing like a sad cat, what the fuck.”

Bucky fast forwards, as if some key change later on in the song will render it triumphant. Yeah, no. When it starts playing again, Thom Yorke moans _I’m not here, this isn’t happening_. Sharon really relates to that sentiment right now, actually. She would very much like to not be here. For a bare moment, Bucky looks stricken before he stabs at the pause button, and evens his expression out again. Or tries. The downward turn of his mouth is distinctly unhappy, and Steve’s defensive indignation drains away the second he sees it.

Everyone lapses into uncomfortable silence before starting to pick at their food again. Sharon glares at Natasha, hoping she can read the _why the hell did you make me a part of this??_ she’s making every effort to transmit telepathically. Natasha just raises her eyebrows and taps Sharon’s foot again under the table.

“Fine!” bursts out Steve. “I’ll go to the group sessions at the VA!”

Steve and Bucky seem to have some silent conversation of significant looks and manly jaw clenching then, one that ends in both their faces brightening. It’s some next-level best friends skill, Sharon’s impressed.

Natasha smirks around her mouthful of vegetables, but by the time she swallows, her expression has returned to bland interest. “Oh? Sam’s back working there, isn’t he?” asks Natasha, and the conversation returns to safe ground.

When they’re all finished with dinner and clearing the plates, Sharon and Natasha shoo Steve and Bucky into the living room to bicker cheerfully about modern music, while they wash and dry the dishes.

“You cooked, we clean,” Sharon insists with a smile, then uses the cover of the running water to hiss, “What the hell, Natasha?”

“Sam is going to owe me so big, he’s been trying to get Steve to go to group since basically the second they met,” murmurs Natasha as she hands over dishes for Sharon to wash. “Thanks for the assist.” 

“A heads up would’ve been nice,” says Sharon. Natasha bumps her hip against Sharon’s and winks.

“You did great.”

Sharon glares, but the effect is probably ruined by the flush of pleasure in her face. They’re standing very close together at the sink, and the way they keep brushing up against each other is a feast of physical contact after a long famine. Sharon wonders if she should mention Natasha’s admission earlier, about the Red Room, but before she can decide, Natasha’s throwing in her two cents into Steve and Bucky’s ongoing bickering about music, and Sharon joins in. When they finish with the dishes, they head back to the living room, where Steve and Bucky are sitting close together on the couch. Bucky’s scrolling through Steve’s phone, frowning, while Steve looks on with a long-suffering kind of expression.

“Do you listen to anything a person can dance to? Natasha, Sharon! Does Steve listen to anything actually good?”

“Eeehhh...depends on your definition of good. Nothing danceable, no,” says Natasha, curling up on the smaller loveseat. Sharon dithers over whether to join her there, or pick the armchair, but then Natasha smiles and leans to the side as if to make room for her, so loveseat it is.

Steve rolls his eyes. “Music’s not just about dancing.”

“Sure, but it’s the most fun you can have with music,” says Sharon.

“Thank you, ladies! See?”

“Well, fair warning, dancing now isn’t like it was in our day.”

Sharon remembers the last time she went out dancing: Sonia’s hands on her hips, the press of their bodies together, the heat in the way they swayed and rocked together. Yeah, that probably wasn’t like the way women danced in Steve and Bucky’s day. She meets Natasha’s eyes and wonders if she can see the heat of the memory. Maybe she can, judging by the beginnings of a wicked smirk on her lips.

“Hey, speaking of dancing, you owe me a night out, Natasha.”

“I remember,” says Natasha, with a friendly lean against her, her smile growing before it transitions to an apologetic grimace. “But it’s going to have to wait a little longer. I’m headed back out tonight.” Natasha tips a head towards Bucky. “Some of this one’s latest intel is time-sensitive.”

Bucky’s looking at them both a little too keenly for Sharon’s comfort.

“Need any backup?” asks Steve.

“Not yet, I’ll call you in if I do,” Natasha tells Steve before turning back to Sharon. “When I come back though, we’re going dancing, promise. You pick the place.”

* * *

 _Was it true, what you said about the Red Room earlier?_ Sharon texts Natasha later that night. It shouldn’t matter, not really, and it’s sure as hell none of Sharon’s business. 

But it _does_ matter; it matters to Sharon whether Natasha was lying for the sake of manipulating them, even if the manipulation was benign and good-natured. She hasn’t forgotten about Aunt Peggy’s warning.

 _Yes_ answers Natasha.

It could be a lie, Sharon supposes. She doesn’t think it is, though. Natasha, after all, had bared so many of her ugly truths already, when she’d dumped all those SHIELD files online.

 _Then I hope tonight’s not one of those nights you feel like you should be locked up_ , Sharon texts back.

 _Less of those every year,_ says Natasha.

* * *

With everyone on the same page, the awkward tension between Sharon, Steve, and Bucky eases, and Sharon’s assignment settles into the “nice and quiet” routine she suspects her bosses had hoped for. Now assured that Sharon is an ally, Bucky and Steve prove more willing to go out and about to places more varied than the Pentagon and other vetted locations. They go to the VA, and the farmer’s market, and the library. They visit with Sam Wilson, who Sharon finally meets after only knowing him second-hand through Natasha’s texts and photos. Sharon shadows them from a distance through most of it, keeping an eye on any suspicious activity. 

There is none. It’s boring as hell.

When one of Sharon’s surveillance alerts wakes her late one night, her first reaction is excitement, because yes, maybe something’s happening! But it’s just Bucky, slipping out of the apartment in a hooded sweatshirt to tap lightly on her door. Sharon grabs her gun and goes to the door.

“What’s up?” she asks, reflexively keeping her voice quiet.

Bucky matches her low tone. “Can’t sleep. Was gonna go for a walk, figured I should give you a heads up.”

“Gimme a minute, I’m coming with.”

“You don’t have to, I can handle myself.”

She doesn’t doubt it. But just in case he’s up to something, and just in case HYDRA or someone else is lurking around out there, she’s going with him.

“It’s my job,” she says, and he shrugs, but makes no move to leave her behind.

Sharon gets her holster and gun on, throws on a jacket and her shoes, and then they head out into the night.

“What about Steve?” asks Sharon.

“He sleeps like the dead, didn’t wanna wake him. I left him a note.”

The careful, good-natured ease Sharon’s grown used to from Bucky in the daylight hours isn’t much in evidence tonight. He’s quiet and tense, hollow-eyed. His stride down the quiet and empty street is more of a stalk than a walk.

“Bad night?” ventures Sharon. Bucky just gives a short and sharp nod.

They cut a wandering, circling path through the neighborhood in silence for about an hour before Bucky relaxes even the smallest amount. It’s enough, apparently, because he directs them back towards their apartment building, and bids her goodnight.

“Sorry to keep you up,” he says.

“It’s alright.”

The late night walks become a semi-regular feature of Sharon’s detail. She stays alert, pays close attention to Bucky, just in case they’re something more than a restless, nightmare-riddled man’s coping mechanism, but the walks remain uneventful, silent and aimless, haunted by whatever ghosts the Winter Soldier carries with him.

* * *

After a couple of weeks, Natasha comes back and they have a another dinner at Steve and Bucky’s place, this time with Sam Wilson invited too. 

“So, is this a dinner party or pre-mission planning?” He hefts his wing jetpack in one hand, and a bottle of wine in the other. “I’m prepared for either, just wanted to know.”

“Both. And good job being prepared, but no mission tonight,” says Natasha.

Natasha brings news and a proposed mission from Fury: there’s an old off-the-books SHIELD base way up in the Yukon that has some weapons and artifacts in it that HYDRA absolutely should not get a hold of. Fury wants the Avengers to go in and clear it out.

“We think AIM’s already moved in on it, and it’s probably best that none of this stuff even enters any official chain of evidence,” says Natasha.

Steve scowls. “How much dangerous stuff that should have been destroyed in the first place did SHIELD just leave lying around?”

“A lot,” says Sharon. “About half of Aunt Peggy’s early SHIELD stories are her chasing that stuff down.”

Sharon shares a couple of the stories over dinner. Steve’s cooked this time, and Sharon shoots a dubious glance at Bucky as Steve brings a pot of chili to the table. Honestly, she’s not sure she’ll ever trust the culinary skills of a man who eats plain oatmeal as a midnight snack. The grim expression on Bucky’s face as he sticks his spoon into the chili isn’t encouraging. Thankfully, the chili’s not too bad, just bland.

Sam takes one taste, and makes an inarticulate noise of rage. Natasha silently slides the bottle of hot sauce on the table over to him.

“What?” asks Steve. “It tastes fine!”

Sam just begins pouring hot sauce into his chili while maintaining direct, unblinking eye contact with Steve.

“So, you’re moving on this base soon then?” asks Bucky before the standoff between Steve and Sam can escalate.

Steve and Natasha take the hint and sketch out a tentative plan for recon and hitting the SHIELD base later that week. Condiments and utensils are drafted into service as stand-in Avengers, and the kitchen table turns into an ad-hoc map. By the end of dinner, the plan is mostly finalized. Sharon’s briefly excited about a reprieve from this assignment’s steady boredom, but of course, she and Bucky are staying in DC.

“Sorry,” says Natasha. “Barnes isn’t supposed to leave the country.”

Sharon sighs. “Have fun blowing stuff up without us, I guess.”

“We’ll make our own fun!” says Bucky with a bright smile. Steve looks alarmed. Sharon’s kind of intrigued.

“Speaking of fun, the night’s young, and I owe you a night out. You picked a place yet?” Natasha asks Sharon.

“What, tonight?”

“Yeah, tonight.”

Sharon’s not opposed, far from it, but— “I’m on the job,” she says gesturing towards Bucky.

“Wait, you’re going out dancing?” Bucky stops picking at the remains of his chili and straightens in his chair. “The job’s coming with you.”

“Um—”

“Shut up, Steve, you’re coming too,” says Bucky before Steve can even get an objection out.

Sam looks at them all with narrowed, considering eyes, then raises an eyebrow at Natasha. Natasha doesn’t acknowledge it, and Sam smirks a little before shaking his head. “I’ve got work bright and early tomorrow, but you kids have fun.”

“So? Where to?” prompts Natasha as they all start clearing the table.

“Bossa Bistro?”

Natasha smiles. “Perfect. I’ve gotta go change, be back in an hour.”

* * *

Sharon scrambles to get ready, ransacking her closet for a dress or skirt suitable for both dancing and concealing weapons, then hastily puts her makeup on. She feels like she’s 20 again and going straight from an exam to a night out. _Work hard party hard_ , they used to say, and they’d spend the night going from one party to another, or from dance floor to dance floor. 

When she’s done getting ready, she looks herself over in the mirror. Thigh holster: secure but not visible. Hair: loose and messy in, hopefully, a sexy way, because she does not have time to attempt anything else. Makeup: successful smoky eyes. There’s a knock at the door then, so she tugs her dress into place and heads out.

Natasha’s at the door, wearing a black dress that clings to her generous curves, her hair in a loose bun that leaves the creamy skin of her neck and chest bare like an invitation. Sharon is sorely tempted to say fuck dancing, and instead just grab Natasha’s hand to pull her inside, mess up that bun and mark up all that pale skin.

“You ready?” asks Natasha, and then the door across the hall opens too, Steve and Bucky coming out.

Sharon drags her attention away from the swell of Natasha’s breasts to say, “Yeah. You look amazing.”

“Thanks,” says Natasha with a smile deep enough to show off her dimples. “You too.” She turns to Steve and Bucky behind her, gives them a once-over. “You boys will do too, I suppose.”

They do cut handsome figures, and normally Sharon would be appreciative. She’s pretty distracted by Natasha though, so as sharply dressed as Bucky is, and as tight as the sweater Steve’s wearing is, she’s only got eyes for the sway of Natasha’s hips as she leads them downstairs to her sleek Camaro.

* * *

Sharon and Natasha give Steve and Bucky firm instructions to not “ruin a nice night out by getting kidnapped by HYDRA” (Natasha’s words) and to check in with them every half-hour (Sharon’s attempt to maintain some semblance of professionalism), and then promptly ditch them both at the bar in favor of the dance floor.

“This—this isn’t how it usually goes?” Sharon hears Steve say to Bucky as Natasha takes her hand.

All Sharon catches before the beat overtakes them is Bucky going, “Aww, buddy,” and then she’s too busy keeping up with Natasha to care.

Sharon hasn’t done any Latin dancing in a long time, but after one song, and with Natasha leading, she falls back into the rhythm of it easily enough. And anyway, the dancing is kind of besides the point. The point is being as close to Natasha as she’s ever been, holding her hands and moving together, seeing the sparkle in her eyes.

“Your turn,” says Natasha, as the band transitions to another song, and Natasha cedes the lead to her. Sharon’s happy to take it, even if directing Natasha into some spins is as ambitious as she’s willing to get.

“You are way better at this than I am,” admits Sharon with a laugh after Natasha shows off some especially fancy footwork.

“You’re keeping up though,” says Natasha. Some of her hair is falling free of the loose bun, and Sharon pulls her in close to tuck it back. Natasha lets her, smiling, then twirls away.

After one more song, they check in on Bucky and Steve, who have managed to acquire a table off to the side of the dance floor. Bucky seems to be watching the dancers avidly, eyes on their footwork, while Steve has his shoulders hunched like he’s still the small, awkward guy Aunt Peggy first met, and not Captain America. He blushes when Sharon and Natasha get to the table.

“You two, uh, look really nice out there,” he manages.

“Thanks,” says Natasha. “You gonna hit the dance floor too?”

Steve blanches and shakes his head. Bucky shrugs, shifts uncomfortably.

“Don’t wanna give anyone a nasty surprise,” he says, wiggling his metal fingers with a grimace. Steve frowns and takes hold of Bucky’s hand, brings it to his mouth to press a kiss to the gleaming knuckles. Sharon goes very still and tries not to betray her surprise, or her curiosity, beyond shooting a glance at Natasha, who seems unsurprised. Bucky’s eyes crease up in a smile. “What, you gonna go out there with me, Rogers?”

“Think that’ll lead to some casualties on the dance floor, but—” Steve visibly girds himself. “If you want. Yeah.”

“He’s not actually joking about the casualties on the dance floor thing,” says Natasha. “I’ll show you the video some time.”

“Natasha! You said you deleted it!”

Natasha grins. “C’mon Barnes, I’ll give you a lesson,” she says, and leads him to the dance floor.

Sharon’s still processing that kiss. Is that an old development, or a new one? Aunt Peggy certainly never mentioned it. Steve notices her processing. “That gonna go in any of your reports?” he asks, sharp and wry.

“Seems private. And not really relevant to my job.”

Steve nods, and they watch Natasha and Bucky on the dance floor. Bucky’s picking up the steps pretty fast. After a couple songs, he’s doing well enough that Natasha cuts him loose, and beckons to Sharon.

“You good here?” Sharon asks Steve.

“Yeah, go, I’m fine,” he says with a smile, so Sharon goes to rejoin Natasha.

By the time she gets back to the dance floor, Bucky’s already found a new partner, a tall, full-figured woman who seems charmed by him, and more than willing to pick up where Natasha left off. The dance floor is getting hot and crowded now, people dancing closer as the beat grows faster and everyone’s personal space bubbles contract. Sharon’s not complaining. She and Natasha can press close now, can sway and grind together in ways that leave Sharon breathless. This is how Sharon likes it best, this is what she chases every time she hits a dance floor: the hectic heat and rhythm of everyone’s bodies, learning her partner’s body. Natasha’s body.

She’s smaller than Sharon, but strong and sinuous under her hands, her pale skin flushed pink and shining in the building heat of the club. And she is a _good_ dancer, which isn’t a surprise. What is a surprise is the way it lights her up, turning her young and happy and uncalculated. It’s a good look on her.

They dance until they’re too hot and thirsty to stay on the dance floor, when they retreat to the bar, then they start the whole cycle over again. Once the crowd thins some, they even manage to get Steve on the dance floor, Bucky and Natasha attempting to baby him through some basic steps. It doesn’t go well. Apparently, the super soldier serum can enhance every sense but rhythm.

It’s almost last call before they leave, and Sharon’s just shy of tipsy. It makes her bold enough to lock arms with a mostly sober Natasha on their way back to Natasha’s Camaro, and Natasha lets her. She fits perfectly against Sharon.

On the drive back to the apartment, Sharon wonders, _was this a date_? It’s probably too late to ask now, and no way is she going to ask while Steve and Bucky are in the backseat. Sharon still doesn’t even know if Natasha’s into women. Natasha hasn’t said she’s _not_ into women, reasons Sharon, and they’d just spent the night dancing pretty damned closely. Sharon’s luck with this kind of thing is so atrocious that she’s not willing to take that as evidence of anything. She’d made out with girls on the dance floor before, only to have them turn around and pull that _I kissed a girl and I liked it_ _but I’m definitely still straight_ bullshit on her.

 _You should probably just ask her_ , says the sensible, sober part of Sharon, while tipsy, kind of horny Sharon says, _yeah, you should. You should ask her upstairs._

She doesn’t though. Natasha drops them all off in front of their building, and Steve and Bucky say their thank yous and good nights, then head inside, hand in hand.

“You’re a really good dance partner,” says Sharon.

“Thanks. You too,” says Natasha. Her face is half in shadow, but Sharon can see the curve of her lips clearly. Her eyes are another matter; the car’s overhead light does little to illuminate what the look in them means.

Sharon blames the alcohol for the awkward, across-the-gear-shift casual hug she attempts. Natasha’s not a casual hug kind of person, which Sharon realizes about one second into this poor decision, but Natasha hugs her back anyway. She smells like some sweet and smoky perfume, and like sweat. In the close confines of the car, it’s a heady mixture. Sharon pulls back before she can make things any more awkward than they already are, and is surprised when Natasha drops a quick kiss to Sharon’s cheek on the way. At least, Sharon thinks it was supposed to be a kiss to her cheek. It lands closer to the corner of her mouth, and Sharon can hear the little breath of surprise that Natasha sucks in. Which isn’t encouraging. Natasha’s eyes are wide as she jerks back quickly. If not for that, Sharon would have—

“Good night,” Sharon says, instead of doing anything more stupid that she won’t be able to take back, and slides back across the seat, and out of the car.

Bucky’s waiting outside his own apartment door when she gets inside, doing a James Dean kind of lean. He narrows his eyes at her.

“Everything alright?” she asks.

“Yeah. I was gonna say, if you were gonna be…otherwise occupied tonight, me and Steve can look after ourselves, but I see you’re alone.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” She busies herself with her keys and opening her door, but the silence from Bucky is pretty suggestive. When she glances at him, he’s giving her a deeply unimpressed look. Great. The Winter Soldier knows she has a crush on the Black Widow.

Thankfully he drops it, albeit after a gusty sigh. “Thanks for tonight, by the way. It was nice to go out.”

He gives her a small, sweet smile, and Sharon smiles back. “You’re welcome.”

They exchange good nights, and go into their respective apartments. She checks the security feeds, sees that everything’s been quiet, then she begins to shed the evidence of her night out, kicking off her heels and shimmying out of her dress.

The last remnants of her tipsiness have faded by now, but when she gets in bed, her muscles are still loose and warm from the night’s dancing, and from the memory of Natasha moving with her. That Bucky had thought she wouldn’t be coming home alone tonight makes it feel natural to imagine just that: stumbling into the apartment with Natasha, kissing all the way, kicking their heels off gracelessly on their way to the bedroom. Heat pools and pulses in Sharon’s cunt as she plays the scenario out in her head, and she slips her hand into her underwear. She’s wet already, underwear hot and damp with it, and if Natasha had come upstairs with her—

Sharon lets herself imagine it, a jumble of half-formed desires, and comes thinking of Natasha’s lips, and her hands.


	3. Chapter 3

The morning after their night out, she agonizes over whether to send Natasha a text, or what text to even send. _I had a good time last night, let’s do it again?_ That was a classic. Or maybe she would wait for Natasha to text her. Or keep things business-like and ask about the upcoming mission. Ugh. Sharon has not missed this part of being interested in someone. Whatever, she has another couple of hours before her not sending a text, or Natasha not sending a text, got to be weird. She’ll figure out what to say later.

Steve’s going to meet with Natasha for mission prep, so it’s just her and Bucky headed to the Pentagon today. He doesn’t seem any worse for wear for the late night, though he looks kind of mussed and harried, like he woke up late.

“Do you mind if I eat in the car?” he asks, waggling some sort of breakfast or protein bar at her. He’s got some sort of shake in his other hand, and juggles it all awkwardly as he opens the car door.

“No, go for it,” she says as she takes the driver’s seat.

The drive is comfortably quiet, and Sharon checks automatically for tails and security threats while Bucky slurps at his shaker bottle grimly.

“Wake up too late for a proper breakfast?”

Bucky shakes his head and scowls. “I’m supposed to drink these disgusting things to get my weight up. I swear, this shit tasted way better in Wakanda. Maybe I should ask Shuri to send me whatever they use there.”

Before Sharon can ask any number of questions, starting with _you’re on first name terms with the princess of Wakanda?_ her phone chimes.

“Can you check that for me?” she asks Bucky, not taking her eyes from the road. “My phone’s right under the console.”

“Sure. It’s from Natasha.” Shit shit shit maybe she shouldn’t have asked Bucky to read it. But he continues, “‘Mission is a go for tomorrow, see you afterwards.’ And then there’s, uh, a little smiley face? And a tiny lady in a dress doing...something.”

“What kind of smiley face?”

“I dunno, a smiley face. Is it important?”

“Yes!” She reaches a stoplight, and looks over at Bucky to ask for more details, but he’s already setting her phone down and pulling out his own.

“Hold on, Steve texted me,” he says, and starts tapping away at his phone with his free hand, and then the light’s green again, and Sharon stifles a groan of frustration.

She checks her phone at the next red light. The message is exactly what Bucky said it was, only Natasha used the blushing happy emoji, plus the dancing lady. What does that mean? Is it good or bad? Does that mean Natasha wants to go out again? She said “see you afterwards,” with no question mark, that’s good, right? How should Sharon respond?

Sharon feels Bucky’s eyes on her once he sets his own phone down.

“The tiny lady is dancing, for the record. No one’s given you a primer on modern emoji usage?”

“No, they don’t really use them in Wakanda. And I wasn’t exactly texting anyone before. So...what are you going to text back?”

Sharon shoots a quick sideways look at Bucky. He’s looking at her with guileless interest.

“I don’t know.”

“You should ask her out.”

“Did I ask you? I’m pretty sure I didn’t ask you.”

“I mean, last night was a double date, right?” Bucky went on blithely. “I’ve been on a lot of them with Steve, it seemed like a double date. Historically not in that particular configuration, I have to admit.”

“That’s—no, it wasn’t—it was just a night out. With a friend. And her friend. And my assignment.”

“Whatever. You wanted it to be a double date. You should go for it.”

Sharon responds with icy silence for approximately one and a half miles. Bucky is unbothered and slurps at his disgusting protein shake.

“Okay, but I don’t even know if she’s into women.”

Bucky shrugs. “Gotta at least take a swing to strike out.” Sharon doesn’t know enough about baseball to rebut this assertion. She taps her fingers on the steering wheel and considers and discards multiple possible responses to Natasha’s text. Bucky twists in his seat to look at her. “Seriously, you should just ask her out. Listen, I didn’t know if Steve was queer or not, and I still went for it, and it turned out just fine!”

“I’m not sure your 1940s romance tips apply here.”

“Who said anything about 1940s? We weren’t together then. I made my move the second Rhodes turned me loose. We hugged, I said I love you, and we kissed. Done.”

Okay, Sharon knows enough about baseball to know that the correct saying here is, “Wow, swinging for the fences, weren’t you?”

“Hey, I hit a home run, didn’t I?” he says, and when she glances over at him, he’s practically beaming, eyes gone soft and bright at the memory.

Sharon can’t help but imagine the scene Bucky so briefly described, and it turns into some sappy, softly-lit black and white scene in her head, complete with swelling orchestral background music. Or maybe it was like something out of a Nicholas Sparks movie, or the guy-on-guy version of that famous V-J day kiss. The kind of passionate kiss that had a happily ever after slapped on it, the end credits rolling to applause and happy sniffing. It can’t have been as easy as Bucky is making it out to be. And it can’t be further than what Sharon imagines for her and Natasha’s first kiss. She’s not looking for epic, deathless romance here. She’ll settle for any romance at all, really.

“I can’t believe you reunited with your best friend after seventy years and just went straight for the declaration of love and a make out.”

“What can I say, recovering most of your memories after amnesia really gives you some perspective,” he says wryly. “We’d waited long enough. And it’s all part of my Fuck HYDRA plan!”

That startles a laugh out of her. “Yeah? How is making out with your best friend part of a Fuck HYDRA plan? What else is involved in the Fuck HYDRA plan?”

She pulls into one of the Pentagon’s secure parking lots, and both she and Bucky automatically check the cars in front of and behind them: all clear still, nothing out of the ordinary.

“The Fuck HYDRA plan has a lot of action items,” says Bucky as she pulls up to the security kiosk.

She shoots Bucky an amused and appalled look as they both pull out their CAC cards for the guard. “Jesus, you’ve been spending too much time in briefings.”

“Action item one: bring down HYDRA, preferably with a minimum of violence—”

“Thanks for the help with that in Europe, by the way.”

He smiles at her, broad and pleased. “You’re welcome! Action item two: get my damn memories back. Marked that one off as complete, or as complete as it’s probably gonna get—” Bucky goes silent the second she rolls the window down, and they both smile at the guard as Sharon passes their cards along. When they pull away from the kiosk into the lot, Bucky continues, “Action item three: make sure HYDRA can’t ever control me again.”

“That’s not part of action item one?”

“Yes and no. Anyway, that’s done too. Action item four: live my best life aka, would HYDRA hate that I’m doing this? If yes, do it. Which is where making out with Steve comes in. Most things fall under action item four, really.”

Sharon pulls into the parking spot and studies Bucky. There are a lot of questions she’d like to ask about this Fuck HYDRA plan, both for the sake of her assignment and her own curiosity, but in a Pentagon parking lot probably isn’t the best place for it. And really, she can’t quibble with any of Bucky’s action items. Doing the opposite of what HYDRA wants is a pretty good life philosophy. Bucky could hit the motivational speaking circuit with that.

“Live your best life, huh? Who taught you that saying anyway?”

“The internet is great. Definitely part of me living my best life. And you should live your best life and ask Romanoff out,” he says, casting a significant look at her phone before unbuckling his seatbelt and getting out of the car.

She grabs her bag and phone and follows him. “I don’t think I should ask her out right before she goes on a mission for who knows how long.”

“Excuses, excuses. Do you need me to write this text for you? Because I will.”

“No!” She pulls out her phone and types out a response before she can overthink it: _stay safe! And looking forward to it_. Okay, easy enough. But what about the emojis.

“What are you writing?”

“I am not workshopping my text with you,” she says without looking up from the array of emojis available. Winky face? Winky face with a kiss? No, that’s moving too fast, and weirdly presumptuous. She settles on winky face and a heart, then taps send. Bucky’s looking on with way too much interest. “Getting involved in my romantic life is not part of your Fuck HYDRA plan.”

“Action item four can and does involve making the world a better place, Sharon.” He gives her a limpid look, somehow making his eyes ludicrously large, like some sort of Precious Moments figurine. “Love always makes the world a better place.”

Sharon responds to that bullshit with her best dead shark eyes glare as they approach the security checkpoint. Bucky is, tragically, immune, and just smiles at her in apparently genuine delight.

“Does that look work on literally anyone? Or that line?” she asks.

“It worked on my parents, the nuns, Father O’Shaughnessy, Grady the grocer…You and Steve are the only people it doesn’t work on,” says Bucky, shaking his head and arranging his face into a hangdog expression. His bright eyes give his mischief away.

Yeah, okay. Sharon’s starting to get why Aunt Peggy remembered him with such fondness.

* * *

Steve and Natasha leave for their mission the next day. Steve knocks on her door to let her know.

“It’s looking like this will take at least a couple weeks,” he says, his face tight and pinched with unhappiness. “I’m not happy about being gone so long, but…”

“We’ll be fine here, Steve. Unless there’s something I should be worried about?”

“No, there’s nothing. No specific threats, anyway, just…” Steve shifts the duffle on his shoulder awkwardly. Sharon raises her eyebrows. “I know you’re not actually babysitting Bucky, I know you’re under no obligation to do anything but keep an eye out, but...can you…” Steve trails off again.

“Can I….?” prompts Sharon.

“Just—make sure he’s doing okay?”

“You wanna be more specific?” she asks, because Bucky mostly seems fine to her, night time walkabouts aside.

Steve grimaces. “No, I—sorry, sorry, it’s not your job. I’m just being crazy.”

“Yeah, you are, Steve! Superhearing means I can hear you!” comes the sound of Bucky’s voice.   

“Yeah, yeah, sue me for caring!” says Steve as he rolls his eyes, but the tension on his face eases. “We won’t be on radio silence for the whole mission,” he tells Sharon, in what she recognizes as his professional Captain America voice. “If anything happens, and I mean anything…”

“Got it, Cap. I’ll text, or call. Go, we’ll be just fine. I kept you safe all that time, didn’t I?”

He smiles at her, then stiffens his shoulders. For a second, she thinks he’s about to salute her. “Thanks Sharon,” is all he says, then he goes.

* * *

That night, Bucky ends up waking her for one of his late night walks. She’s not too surprised. He looks less tense and haunted than he has on past nights, at least.

“Sorry,” he mutters, as they make their way out of the building. “Just couldn’t settle.”

“Bed too empty?”

Bucky gives her a halfhearted glare, then sighs. “Yeah.”

Tonight’s walk isn’t long, just under an hour, and Sharon is almost disappointed. She likes the hush and stillness of the neighborhood at this hour, and tonight, when Bucky’s strolling more than stalking down the quiet streets, it’s actually kind of nice. She wonders if she can gently shepherd Bucky into turning these strolls into late night/early morning cardio. Then Sharon could kill two birds with one stone. When they get back to their building, she risks the easy silence to ask a question.

“You go on walks like this in Wakanda too?”

“Yeah. In the gardens there.” His face has gone soft with the memory. Interesting.

“You have company there too?”

He looks at her sidelong, amused. “Just the cats. They love cats in Wakanda. Good night, Sharon.”  

Well, it was worth a shot. “Good night, Bucky.”

* * *

_Steve is driving me crazy_ Natasha texts after a couple of days. _Is Barnes driving you crazy? Because this is almost worse than when we were still looking for him._

Sharon looks at Bucky, who’s calm and serious at his workstation, going through HYDRA and SHIELD intel to match up HYDRA operations with SHIELD missions. Mindful of Steve’s request, and her own assignment, Sharon’s kept a close eye on Bucky, but he seems to be doing fine, though she admittedly doesn’t know what he gets up to in his apartment in the evenings.

_No, Bucky’s been fine, same as he usually is. How is Steve driving you crazy?_

_What if bucky has a nightmare, what if bucky forgets to eat, what if sharon and bucky are kidnapped by hydra blah blah blah._ Sharon grins and is about to respond, but then Natasha asks _Anyway how are you?_

_Bored, but good. How’s the yukon?_

_I didn’t miss the frozen tundra. We’re all fine though._

The whole team up in the Yukon must have a few moments of downtime, because Bucky’s picked up his phone too, and is bent over it with a half-smile as he taps out a text. Sharon considers snitching on Steve to Bucky, but judging by the sighing and eye-rolling Bucky’s doing, Steve’s snitching on himself.

_Everything’s quiet here, no hydra kidnappings at all_

_What happened to you and Barnes making your own fun?_

Sharon’s about to send a _??_ before she remembers their conversation from before they all went out dancing. _Idk, have you guys blown anything up yet? ;)_ After a minute or so, a video comes through from Natasha: a snowy field, a metal blast door set into the ground, and then a small, concussive explosion, mostly visible in the way it shifts the snow.

_Your turn_ , sends Natasha after that. Sharon goes over to Bucky’s workstation to show him the texts and the video.

“You’re the one who said we’d make our own fun, time to deliver,” she tells Bucky.

“My spreadsheets cross-referencing HYDRA and SHIELD operations don’t count as fun?”

Sharon peers at Bucky’s screen. It’s a very nice spreadsheet, to be fair.

“No, that does not count as fun,” she tells Bucky.

“Well we can’t blow anything up, it’s the Pentagon. Here, take a selfie with me so Steve will stop fussing.”

“Happy selfie, like we’re having a ton of fun here with your spreadsheets, or stern selfie, like Steve should find some chill?” asks Sharon.

“Natasha’s gonna see it too, so...sexy selfie.” Sharon glares at Bucky, but he just grins and waggles his eyebrows.

“This is not going to be a sexy selfie, but you’re free to duckface into the camera if you want.”

“Duckface?” asks Bucky as he taps into his phone’s camera app.

“You know what a selfie is but not what the stupid trying to be sexy duckface look is?”

Bucky stretches his arm to fit both of them in the frame, and takes the picture, catching Sharon mid-blink. He snickers as he looks at the picture, and she jabs him with her elbow.

“Sorry, sorry, okay. Here. Smile!” says Bucky, and takes another picture, both of them smiling into the camera. They look at the result: Sharon’s been told she has a sweet smile, and Bucky’s toothy and boyish grin is pretty sweet too, so the picture presents a far more wholesome image of them than is probably accurate.

“We look...cute?” says Sharon.

“We do,” confirms Bucky, and sends it to Natasha and Steve before Sharon can object.

Steve sends back a heart emoji and miss you within seconds. Natasha’s reply takes longer, but when it comes, it makes Sharon grin: _ugh, too cute, all those DIMPLES_ , then a couple heart emojis.

“Jesus christ, Sharon, you have really got to ask her out when she gets back.”

Sharon sighs, and she means for it to come out exasperated, but it mostly just ends up sounding lovesick.

“It’s a little more complicated than that, with our jobs.”

Bucky glances over at her, solemn now. “I know. But don’t wait too long, Carter. Steve, me, Pegs...we all waited too long, held back too much, and then the war made our choices for us.”

The pain in Bucky’s eyes looks an awful lot like the fresher version of the grief Sharon’s always seen in Aunt Peggy’s eyes when she’s talked about Steve and Bucky. Sharon knows she could end up with her own small tragedy: a might-have-been, a cherished and bittersweet possibility of a romance that never got the chance to grow into itself. Her and Natasha’s jobs aren’t safe, after all, and Natasha has plenty of enemies. This small sweet thing between them could be gone before it ever gets the chance to become real.

“I won’t wait too long, Bucky,” she says softly. Then she smiles, small and teasing. “I’ll shoot for something squarely in the middle of _pining for my best friend for decades_ and _jumping on my coworker immediately_.”

The solemnity on Bucky’s face lifts and he laughs. “Hey, don’t knock your aunt’s methods! They work!”

* * *

When they’re done for the day and back at their respective apartments, it takes about an hour for Bucky to knock on her door.

“I don’t really want to cook for one, wanna come over?”

Sharon’s dinner plans had consisted of scrambling some eggs to eat with toast, so Sharon says, “Sure,” and follows Bucky next door.

“It’s impossible to make one serving of spaghetti and meatballs,” he says, heading for the kitchen where some sauce is bubbling away in a pot. “Can you finish up the salad please?”

She joins him in the kitchen, where the smell of a rich marinara sauce is wafting enticingly from the stove and salad fixings and a cutting board are already arrayed on the counter, and starts chopping vegetables.

She’s spent most of the day with him already, but Bucky’s easy company when he’s not needling her about her love life, and it’s nice to have dinner with him. Especially when dinner is some seriously good pasta. Of course, Bucky still needles her about her love life, which, after a few mouthfuls of perfect pasta, Sharon’s feeling somewhat more indulgent about.

“Help me help you, Agent Carter,” he says. “What will it take for you to ask Romanoff out?”

Sharon stabs her fork through a meatball. “Seriously, why are you so invested in this.”

“Why are you so resistant. I don’t get it. Your jobs, sure, but just because you can’t start something right away doesn’t mean you can’t make your intentions clear, you know? You’re not gonna get arrested for being queer, you like her, she likes you…Is it because she’s the Black Widow? Is it the tragic assassin past? People with tragic assassin pasts deserve love too, you know.”

Bucky says it flippantly enough, but he immediately starts twirling some pasta around his fork with far more attention than the task deserves. Sharon sighs.

“It’s not her tragic assassin past, and it’s not just our jobs. Just—it’s different, with women.”

Bucky frowns. “What do you mean?”

“Like, you’re interested in a woman, and you spend a lot of time together, and you flirt—or you think you do—and you get all touchy-feely, and then when you try to make a move…surprise! She’s straight. She thought that was all just friend stuff. It’s happened to me more than a few times,” admits Sharon.

It’s happened basically every time she’s tried to date a woman she doesn’t know through work, anyway. After the fourth time, Sharon had started to wonder if she’d just missed out on some bisexual secret for finding women to date, or if there was some vibe she was failing to put out or receive. Sure, she thinks Natasha’s flirting with her. But maybe this is just how Natasha is with friends. Sharon doesn’t know.

“People who dance together the way you two did aren’t just friends,” says Bucky, raising a dubious eyebrow.

“Also I don’t want to ruin our working relationship.”

The dubious eyebrow doesn’t come down. “Uh huh.”

“And my relationship track record hasn’t been great,” she grits out, before stuffing some salad in her mouth.

“I’m just hearing a lotta excuses here, Carter.”

She glares at him. “And let’s not forget that it’s just not the best time right now what with my assignment on your detail. Even _if_ I ‘make my intentions clear,’ it’s just...weird timing. It could put us _all_ in a bad position if something goes wrong before you’re cleared.”

Bucky narrows his eyes and hums thoughtfully. “Alright,” he concedes, with suspicious mildness. “Does that mean that when you’re off my detail, you’ll ask Romanoff out?”

He makes a face that’s maybe meant to be conspiratorial, but Sharon’s too distracted by whatever the fuck is happening with Bucky’s eyebrow waggling right now.

“What even is your ridiculous muppet face, Barnes,”  she says, staring in appalled awe.

His eyebrows stop performing the wave. “What’s a muppet?”

Sharon sets her fork down on her now empty plate. “Okay, time out, this is vital knowledge.”

She spends the rest of the night catching Bucky up on the touchstones of millennial culture in somewhat haphazard fashion, before they somehow end up watching one of Sharon’s terrible action movies. Bucky heckles it relentlessly. It’s actually pretty fun. Of course, he doesn’t let the fun distract him from his apparent mission.

“You never answered me. Will you ask Romanoff out when you’re off my detail?”

“When I’m off your detail, and Natasha and me are in the same place for at least a week, sure.”

Bucky narrows his eyes suspiciously, clearly looking for the loophole, but seems willing to accept this. “Okay,” he says and turns his attention back to the movie, which immediately causes him to make an affronted noise. “Cars don’t _blow up like that_.”

This is way better than listening to Steve listen to sad songs on repeat, thinks Sharon.

* * *

The next day, Bucky’s whisked away to some unspecified debriefings, and Sharon almost makes a fuss about being included. All it would take for things to turn disastrous would be one HYDRA mole in the Pentagon, or someone deciding that Bucky Barnes was better off disappeared to some black site. But before she can register any objections, Colonel Rhodes takes her aside.

“I’ll be there the whole time,” he tells her. “Your detail doesn’t mean you’ve got to be attached to the man’s hip.”

“Yes sir.”

“How’s it going, by the way? Everything staying as nice and quiet as everyone’s hoping for?”

Colonel Rhodes seems equal parts wry and annoyed, though not at her. The morass of inter-agency politics at play is the more likely target of his annoyance. From what Natasha had told her, Rhodes just wants to run his task force with a minimum of interference, and she knows that Rhodes isn’t asking her if she’s _keeping_ things quiet, but rather whether they truly are.

“Yes sir. No problems with Barnes or Rogers, no attacks from HYDRA.”

“Good. Listen, I know this kind of babysitting detail isn’t your ideal assignment, but just stick it out for another couple months. Four months, tops. If everything stays nice and quiet, Barnes’ll be just another member of this task force by then, and the Winter Soldier will be back to being an assassin boogeyman.”

“They’ll let him go?” asks Sharon, because she’s wondered about that, in the small hours of the night. Bucky could still be disappeared, could still fall victim to a tragic “accident,” or even failing all that, could still be pressured or forced into being the Winter Soldier again. Sharon wants to know if there are other threats she should be considering on this detail, even if they aren’t, strictly speaking, part of its intended scope.

Rhodes snorts. “Rogers will burn down another government agency if they don’t. And I’d have some real uncomfortable truths to tell the Senate Intel committee.” He looks at her considering. “Don’t worry, Carter. It really is mostly just HYDRA you’ve got to be on the look out for.”

A few hours later, Bucky returns, his face bone-white and blank. Sharon looks at Rhodes, alarmed and wondering what the hell happened in those briefings, if Bucky is about to be thrown in a cell or something. But Rhodes’ body language isn’t especially tense, and he just gives her a small headshake.

“Take the rest of the day, Sergeant,” murmurs Colonel Rhodes, and after long seconds, Bucky nods. “Maybe tomorrow too.”

Rhodes gives Sharon a speaking look that suggests that’s up to her discretion. Bucky just walks away.

“Hard debriefing?” tries Sharon once she’s caught up to him.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Fair enough. They go back to their apartments in silence. He doesn’t ask her over for dinner, and he doesn’t come to her door that night to take a walk either. Sharon worries, and isn’t sure if she should. She keeps an eye on all the security feeds instead, until she falls into a fitful sleep. Bucky looks worse the next morning.

“You didn’t sleep at all, did you,” she says, eyeing the dark circles under his eyes, the bleary and vaguely dazed look about him. He doesn’t seem entirely present. It’s worrying.

“No.”

“Yeah, no, we’re not going to the Pentagon today.”

Bucky focuses on her properly, and a small smile lifts the corner of his mouth. “We’re playing hooky?”

“Uh huh. Got any requests for where to go?”

“Aquarium,” Bucky answers promptly, and Sharon blinks in surprise. She’d expected to drag him somewhere.

“Okay, aquarium it is.”

There are a couple school groups at the National Aquarium, but the place is otherwise mostly empty, and after about half an hour of wandering, Bucky seems to relax, all his attention on the aquarium displays and tanks. It’s a soothing place, she supposes. The jellyfish exhibit especially, where they spend a good half hour staring at the floating bells of the jellies, watching some of them pulse in their own mysterious rhythm.

“They have a webcam, you know. You can watch them whenever you want,” suggests Sharon. She’s starting to find the jellyfish more creepy than soothing, and wants to hurry Bucky along.

“The future is so cool,” he whispers.

One of the staff comes by, leans in conspiratorially. “Hey. Wanna touch ‘em?” she asks, nodding at the jellyfish.

“No thank you,” says Sharon just as Bucky says, “ _Yes_.”

Sharon’s about to nix this on account of it being some kind of security risk, surely, to them or to the jellyfish, she’s not sure which, but the aquarium employee directs them to another exhibit, where there are a lot of interactive displays and open pools. Open pools where you can touch creepy jellyfish, which Bucky does with every sign of being fascinated and delighted. Whatever. This is probably therapeutic, or something. Animal therapy is a thing, she’s pretty sure.

“C’mon Carter, touch it,”

“No.”

“It’s not squishy!”

“That’s not a selling point.”

She does touch the stingrays though, and that’s admittedly kind of cool, if slightly slimy. They seem really happy to be petted, which Bucky seems to be very charmed by, and Sharon can’t help but suspect is because the stingrays want to eat them, or at least be fed by them.

“They like being pet, right?” Bucky asks the aquarium employee.

“Oh yeah, just stick to their wings, they love it. You see how they feel a little slimy?”

“Yeah…”

“That’s their coat of protective mucus!”

“Oh god,” says Sharon and immediately pulls her hand back as Bucky cackles.

They head for the shark exhibit next, where Sharon tries to initiate eye contact with a shark to see if there’s any truth to her ex Robbie’s dumb “dead shark eyes” comment about her. The sharks appear uninterested.

“Aren’t the sharks gonna eat the other fish?” wonders Bucky.

“Circle of life,” says Sharon, then winces when Bucky shoots her a wide-eyed look. “They feed them, I’m sure.”

God, she hopes they feed the sharks, because a fish slaughter probably wouldn’t be good for Bucky’s continued emotional stability right now.

“I don’t know why people think they’re so scary,” says Bucky, staring at one relaxed-seeming shark gliding through the water.

“Because some of them eat people. Also, _Jaws_.”

“These ones don’t eat people though. They’re kind of cute.”

The Winter Soldier _would_ think a shark was cute. Sharon sighs. “One of my ex-boyfriends said I had dead shark eyes.”

Bucky turns to her, his face scrunched up in thought. “As an insult?”

“Well, it wasn’t a _compliment_.”

Bucky’s satisfyingly appalled on her behalf. “What an asshole. I think it’s a compliment, for the record. Nothing wrong with terrifying a man with nothing more than a look. Pegs is so good at that.”

Bucky’s fond and marveling tone makes her grin. “Yeah, she is,” says Sharon.

“We should take a picture in front of the shark, send it to Steve and Natasha. I bet _she_ thinks dead shark eyes is a compliment.”

“Good luck getting the shark to stay still for a photo,” she says, but she takes her phone out anyway. After a few attempts, they finally manage to time a photo right to catch a shark passing behind them, and Sharon sends it off to Natasha and Steve.

They wander around for a little longer, until they’re both hungry enough that their growling stomachs are audible, and Sharon suggests seafood for lunch, to Bucky’s hilariously overblown horror.

“After we made all those fish friends?”

“I don’t think staring at them through glass counts as befriending them.”

In deference to Bucky’s surprisingly delicate sensibilities, they go get burgers instead, then head back to DC. Bucky’s in good enough spirits now to spend most of the drive fiddling with the radio and looking up assorted sea creatures on Wikipedia on his phone. He treats Sharon to a host of facts about sharks, as if he were her own personal provider of Shark Week. When they get home, Sharon sees that Natasha has texted her back: _you two look like you’re having fun. Field trip?_

Bucky, for once, doesn’t seem at all interested in her texts: he’s already on the phone with Steve as he heads into his own apartment, voice gone soft and low.

“Hey Steve…” she hears before the door closes, and she smiles and heads into her own apartment.

_Something like that. Did you know stingrays are covered with protective mucus_

_Gross_

_How’s the mission going?_

_Also gross. AIM is up to some nasty shit up here, I didn’t sign up for this indiana jones shit._

Sharon bites her lip, considers. How much flirting can she get away with? Fuck it. _You’d make a gorgeous indy though ;)_

It’s a terrible line, probably, but Natasha sends back laughing emojis and indulges her, and they text back and forth with dumb riffs on Indiana Jones until Natasha’s called away for her shift on watch. Sharon’s still smiling when she checks her security feeds and the building perimeter, her chest and stomach full of the wobbly warm glow of contact with her crush. It’s a giddy, teenage kind of feeling, the sort of thing she thought she’d left behind with her innocence after the first person she’d killed in the line of duty.

She wonders if Natasha feels the same way. She hopes so.

* * *

Sharon and Bucky only have one more day at the Pentagon for the week, and it’s thankfully uneventful and quiet, with no more mysteriously upsetting briefings. Instead they both spend the day huddled over their desks analyzing old SHIELD intel for HYDRA ties, a numbing task that has Sharon thinking dark thoughts and longing for the weekend. She’ll still be working, sort of, but whatever weekend plans Bucky has will surely be an improvement over wondering just how much of her life she’s unwittingly devoted to the cause of HYDRA.

“Got any weekend plans?” Sharon asks Bucky on the drive back to Dupont Circle on Friday evening.

Bucky shrugs and hums, considering, then asks, “Wanna visit Peggy tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’d be really nice, thanks,” says Sharon, and smiles over at him.

So after a lengthy run on Saturday morning, Bucky mostly keeping pace with Sharon because, “I’m a _gentleman_ , Carter, I’m not gonna run circles around you like _some_ superpowered assholes we know—” they make the drive out to Aunt Peggy’s care home.

Seeing Bucky and Sharon together clearly gives Aunt Peggy a bit of a turn at first, unmooring her in time, which Sharon ought to have anticipated. To Aunt Peggy, they must be a dizzying collision of past and present: one man who ought to be an old ghost here with the young and living present. Sharon almost leaves when confusion and fear linger on Aunt Peggy’s face for long seconds, but Aunt Peggy recovers quickly enough, and recognition and affection light up her eyes. Though one of the nurses says she’s in bed today thanks to her hips aching, the hug she gives Sharon is firm and steady.

“James. I see you’ve met my grandniece Sharon. Sharon, don’t believe any stories James tells you about me.”

“What, I can’t tell Agent Carter the younger about what Agent Carter the elder got up to back in the day?” asks Bucky, greeting her with a kiss to the cheek before settling himself easily at the foot of her bed.

Peggy glares at him, but she’s still smiling. “I know what sort of stories you deem worth telling, James Buchanan, and Sharon does _not_ need to hear about Operation Truffle.”

“Oh, I think I do,” says Sharon, but she lets the conversation move on from there.

Neither Sharon nor Bucky offer any explanation for how or why they’re here together, and Aunt Peggy is still sharp enough to notice the omission. But she’s no stranger to need-to-know, so she doesn’t ask.

Even with that elephant in the room, it’s a good visit. Sharon updates Aunt Peggy on the unclassified parts of her life, and Bucky brings out a tart, sharp edge to Aunt Peggy’s wit, both of them tossing repartee back and forth like something out of an old screwball comedy, until Aunt Peggy’s energy starts to flag and Bucky offers to read to her. She lasts about twenty minutes before Bucky’s soft, low voice sends her to sleep. Bucky tries and fails to not look stricken.

Sharon almost snaps at him for it; this has been a good visit, a good day. Aunt Peggy was doing great, Sharon’s mom had said just last week that Aunt Peggy had more good days than bad. If Aunt Peggy’s fading, she’s doing it gracefully, and that’s a blessing for a woman who’s 90-something years old, so how _dare_ Bucky look like this is some tragedy.

But, Sharon reminds herself, to Bucky it is. It’s seventy years that were stolen from him and Steve, and all the attendant regrets and missed chances. So Sharon lets her anger dissolve.

“You’ve got a voice made for audiobooks,” she says quietly, not entirely joking, as Bucky sets the book down on Aunt Peggy’s nightstand. He presses a soft kiss to Aunt Peggy’s sleeping cheek.

He looks up at Sharon and smiles, small and shy. “Used to read to Steve all the time.”

Sharon tucks Aunt Peggy’s covers in, because her window’s open and the breeze is cool, then slips out of the room, Bucky a half step behind her. When he catches up, he offers her his arm, an automatic courtesy she’s noticed he only offers when he’s not on guard, and she takes it.

It’s an emotional call, probably, but Sharon thinks the weight of the past few weeks’ observation and close contact will back it up: Bucky Barnes is no secret HYDRA sleeper agent. Watching him with Aunt Peggy has convinced her. His kindness with her had been unforced, as unforced and unhidden as the bittersweet grief that had flashed across his face every time he’d visibly been reminded of the seventy years separating him from Aunt Peggy. If he has secrets, they’re mostly in the domain of the private griefs and bitter guilt that send him out on late-night walks.

And if that wasn’t enough, there was Aunt Peggy’s reaction to him, her arch fondness. Slow creep of dementia or not, if she’s having a good day, Sharon’s still going to trust former SHIELD director Peggy Carter’s judgment.

“Okay?” she asks Bucky, once they’re out of the care home, and he nods.

“I look at her and I want my seventy years back. _Our_ seventy years back.” He takes a deep breath then shakes his head. “Not gonna happen obviously.”

“Are you gonna get broody about it?” Sharon asks, and Bucky grins, sharp and wry.

“You’ve got me confused with Steve. Action item four, remember?”

“I remember. So how else are you going to live your best life today?”

“21st century catch up. Shuri keeps sending me ‘memes’ that don’t make sense then calling me a grandpa when I don’t understand them,” he says with a scowl. When they get to the car, he gives her a hopeful look.

“Yeah, no, you’re on your own, enjoy the internet. It doesn’t make much more sense to the rest of us either,” she says. Then, carefully casual as she starts the car, “Princess Shuri texts you often?”

Bucky sighs, immensely put upon. “She basically adopted me as her weird white uncle and made it her job to catch me up on the 21st century while I was in Wakanda. My education, apparently, remains incomplete.”

“Well, I’ll do my part with some exposure to the Top 40,” says Sharon, and tunes the car radio to a local pop station.

* * *

They each do their own thing for the rest of the afternoon, with the most exciting thing happening being a misdelivered package that briefly makes Sharon worry about IEDs and bioweapons, but that’s actually just a neighbor’s new printer. Bucky lures her over to his apartment with the promise of steak for dinner.

“You really hate cooking for one, huh?”

“I literally don’t know how to,” admits Bucky. “Also I watch a lot of cooking shows. Why are there so many of those, by the way?”

Sharon shrugs. “Everyone likes food? They’re nice to watch? I don’t know.”

Dinner’s not quite restaurant quality good, but it’s still pretty damn good, so Sharon’s happy to eat with Bucky. She wonders, idly, if Natasha can cook, then she wonders if she could cook something reasonably impressive for Natasha. Would Natasha even be impressed by fancy food? Should Sharon stick with their whole ice cream and booze thing? Does their ice cream and booze thing even count as a thing, or is Sharon being weird? She frowns as she cuts her steak. Whatever. She’ll add cook dinner for Natasha to the list of potential date ideas anyway. Though—

“Do you think Natasha likes steak?” she asks.

Bucky blinks for a couple seconds, then catches up admirably. “Pretty sure she’d like it if you made it for her, but I don’t think you need to impress her with your cooking skills to woo her.” His mouth twitches into a smile. “Did you want me to ask Steve to ask Natasha for you?”

She kicks him under the table. “No, I don’t need you to pull that kind of high school shit for me, thanks.”

“I take my wingman duties seriously, Carter.”

“Literally no one nominated you to be my wingman, but whatever,” says Sharon. After another couple mouthfuls of steak, she figures she might as well take a chance and pump Bucky for some information. She may be pretty certain he’s not a danger, but there are still some loose threads to tie up when it comes to the way he came in. “So hey, you mentioning Princess Shuri earlier made me wonder: what’s the deal with you and Wakanda? How the hell did that happen? I never got the full details on that.”

Bucky shrugs, looks down at his plate. “It’s not that exciting, really. There was this HYDRA base, there was intel I needed there, on—on the Winter Soldier project. On me, on what they—what they did to me. I went in, ran into some of the Wakandan guard who were there to retrieve some stolen vibranium. Wakanda hasn’t got much of the stuff, I guess, and some guy had stolen a bunch back in the 90s. They’ve been tracking it down ever since. Some of it ended up with HYDRA. Enemy of my enemy and all that, so I figured I’d help them out while I got what I needed, but I got myself blown up, like an idiot. They felt bad for me, I guess, didn’t want to leave me to die, so they took me back to Wakanda for treatment.”

“Huh. They know you were the Winter Soldier when they did that?”

“Dunno. They sure as hell knew by the time I woke up there. They had the Winter Soldier files I’d gone into that damn base to get in the first place. So. They knew. And—T’Challa—Prince T’Challa—was pretty mad about that. About what HYDRA did to me. He offered me sanctuary. I took him up on it.”

“You trusted him?”

“Not at first. But he let me hobble on out of the hospital and said I could leave the country, and I did get close to the border, no one bothering me or anything, even though I definitely stood out. And I thought—you know, no one’s ever gonna look for me here. And I was tired, and still pretty busted up, and my head—” Bucky stops, swallows hard. “Anyway, I stayed. And they helped. So. It worked out.”

“Hell of a favor you owe Wakanda now though,” says Sharon lightly, and takes a sip of water.

“Maybe. T’Challa says we’re even, on account of how I helped in the base, but—” Bucky shrugs again. “He said Wakanda doesn’t need a weapon, I believe him.” Now he looks at her shrewdly. “I’ve already given my report on Wakanda. Does the CIA want more?”

“The CIA always wants to know more about Wakanda,” says Sharon with a wince. And yeah, Sharon knows her history. She knows that’s not likely to lead anywhere good, not for Wakanda anyway.

“They’re not getting any more from me.”

“There anything more to get?”

“I met a lot of nice cats in Wakanda,” says Bucky with wide, guileless eyes. “And the waterfalls are really impressive. Better than Niagara even.”

There’s definitely something up with Wakanda. Whether it’s something the CIA actually needs to know about though…Sharon’s okay with that being her personal judgment call.

“One more question, and I swear I’ll drop this: does Steve know? Whatever it is you’re not saying, does Steve know about it?”

If Steve knows, then Sharon’s conscience can rest easy.

“Yes,” says Bucky, meeting her eyes, solemn and serious.

“Alright. That’s good enough for me.” She sets her fork down. “So! What’s for dessert?”

* * *

By the time Natasha and Steve return the next week, Sharon has joined Bucky for three night time rambles, six dinners, two outings to the grocery store, five long runs, and one trip to the library. Also, she and Bucky catch one dumbshit HYDRA lackey who runs into them in the grocery store parking lot by sheer accident, and who then proceeds to make the extremely poor life decision of attempting to capture the Winter Soldier.

After Sharon rams a full grocery cart into the guy and pins him to a car, thus immobilizing him, Bucky just blinks at him with equal amounts confusion and disappointment. Bucky’s still holding his grocery bags, though he has taken on a fighting sort of stance that suggests he’s willing to give the HYDRA dumbass a kick to one vulnerable area or another.

“Pal. Did you really think this was gonna work? You’re not even _armed_.”

Which probably explains why Bucky hadn’t stirred himself to, say, put the damned grocery bags down, or even get to cover. Sharon glares at him, and jerks her head toward the car, but Bucky just snorts.

“Oh please, you’ve got this. There’s a whole carton of eggs in here, I’m not breaking them,” he says.

“Heil HYDRA,” wheezes the idiot HYDRA agent.

“Whatever, fine,” she says, rolling her eyes, and calls it in.

By mutual, unspoken agreement, Sharon and Bucky decide that Steve does not need to know about this incident.

After all that, Sharon shouldn’t be surprised that she and Bucky are kind of, sort of, probably friends now, and yet she only really realizes it when Steve and Natasha come back from their mission, and walk in on her and Bucky looking at cat videos on Youtube. Sharon spots them coming into the building on the security perimeter feeds that are arrayed on the laptops on the coffee table, but honestly, the cat videos currently playing on the TV are somewhat more compelling and she doesn’t see any reason to pretend she and Bucky are doing anything else. She and Bucky have spent the past couple weeks sending Natasha and Steve assorted cute selfies so it’s way too late to be pretending that they’ve been spending their time doing anything more badass.

“Natasha and Steve are back,” she tells Bucky, and does not get up from under the blanket. It’s late, and it’s really warm under here and Bucky made her tea, and getting up just seems like a lot of effort. Bucky nods in acknowledgment and doesn’t look away from the TV.

“Why is the cat’s tail so cute?” demands Bucky as Maru, the internet’s favorite cat, swishes said tail back and forth. “Why do hundreds of thousands of people watch these videos?”

“ _We’re_ watching these videos right now,” points out Sharon.

“Right, yeah, but that’s sort of educational, I’m trying to learn about—”

“Hey honeys, we’re home,” calls out Natasha as Steve says, “Buck, you in here with Sharon? She didn’t answer her door—”

Bucky finally tears his attention away from Maru leaping into various boxes to beam at Steve. “You’re back! C’mere,” says Bucky, and the bright affection on his face illuminates him as surely as a spring flower opening to the season’s first sunshine. Steve’s own beaming smile mirrors that affection right back at Bucky before he bends down to give him an enveloping hug.

Sharon suspects her own face is also looking suspiciously happy when she smiles at Natasha, which ruins any chance of playing it cool, but fuck it, she _is_ happy: happy to see Natasha back from the mission, whole and unhurt, and happy to see the warm and amused expression on Natasha’s face.

“Now this is a surprisingly adorable picture,” declares Natasha. “The deadly, legendary Winter Soldier and the dangerous Agent 13 curled up on a couch together, watching cute cat videos.”

Steve surfaces from his long, only barely PG-13 kiss with Bucky to give Sharon and Bucky a soppy and soft-hearted sort of look.

“Aww, you two really are cute,” he teases.

Well now Sharon’s feeling kind of weird about it. She gives Steve and Natasha her best dead shark eyes glare. Apparently, Bucky’s breaking out his own chilling, dead-eyed Winter Soldier glower at the same time, because Steve and Natasha grimace and flinch. Damn. She and Bucky have been spending too much time together if they can manage synchronized glares.

“Okay, I take it back, you two are terrifying,” Steve amends. Then he narrows his eyes suspiciously at them. “Everything okay here while we were gone?”

“Fine!” says Bucky.

“All clear,” adds Sharon. Steve doesn’t look as comforted as he ought to be by these assurances. Before he can ask any more questions, Sharon turns to Natasha. “How was your mission?”

“Frequently disgusting, but fine,” says Natasha and perches on the couch’s arm. Bucky elbows Sharon in what she assumes is encouragement, which, _ouch_ , that’s his metal arm.

“I’ve got ice cream in the freezer, if you want to stick around and tell me about it?” says Sharon, and stifles her wince. That was supposed to come out smooth and confident, not as an awkward question.

Natasha smiles anyway and says, “Yeah, I’d like that.”

Bucky and Steve make a suspiciously swift retreat from Sharon’s apartment after that, and Sharon breaks out the ice cream.

“Want a drink too? I’ve replenished my stock of emergency vodka,” she says as she hands Natasha a pint of strawberry cheesecake ice cream.

Maybe it’s pathetic, but ever since she noticed that Natasha had reached for it first that time she came over after SHIELD fell, she always keeps some in the freezer, in case Natasha comes over again. Maybe it’s not so pathetic, if Natasha’s going to give her such a warmly pleased smile.

“Nah, this mission doesn’t warrant the emergency vodka. Unless two weeks on your own with Barnes does? Judging by all the pictures and texts me and Steve got, I’m guessing not.”

Sharon grins. “No, Bucky’s a dream of a security detail. We actually had a pretty good time. He’s got this whole _live your best life_ thing going,” says Sharon, gesturing vaguely with her spoon. “Part of his revenge against HYDRA, apparently. I don’t mind tagging along when it means good food and watching Youtube videos.”

“Really? Wakanda must work some miracles. Steve’s still out here dealing with his feelings by laying waste to every HYDRA base he can,” says Natasha, and shakes her head as she eats a spoonful of ice cream.

“Yeah, as the agent with the dubious distinction of having surveilled both of them, I can pretty definitively tell you that Bucky’s doing significantly better with the whole defrosted in the 21st century situation. And you can tell Fury and Hill: I’m 90% certain he’s not still secretly brainwashed or anything.”

Natasha murmurs, “Good,” and Sharon thinks she can see some tension leave her shoulders as she sighs. “That’s pretty much Rhodes’ take too.”

They eat their ice cream in silence for a moment, and watch the TV, which has now moved on to a new Youtube video of Maru. He’s fighting, or maybe play fighting, with another, smaller cat in this one. Natasha squints thoughtfully at the screen.

“Maybe I should get another cat for Liho to play with,” she says.

“So where do you fall on the spectrum of fuck HYDRA revenge plans?” Sharon asks, because maybe Steve is out there blowing Nazis up to deal with his feelings, but Natasha is right there with him. Natasha raises her eyebrows in question, her mouth still full of ice cream. “I mean, on a scale between ‘live your best life’ and ‘destroy everyone’?”

“I thought my post-Red Room revenge was the source of a fair amount of SHIELD gossip about me. And also the reason there was a kill order out on me,” says Natasha wryly.

Sharon closes her eyes, mortified. She hadn’t _forgotten_ , per se, but she hadn’t even been thinking about it.

“The kill order was before my time,” Sharon offers weakly, and Natasha’s eyes crinkle with amusement.

“It’s okay. I was cutting a pretty bloody swath through what was left of Department X, and taking jobs from whoever paid me. SHIELD wasn’t exactly wrong to have a kill order out on me. It all turned out okay anyway, thanks to Barton and Fury.”

She looks down at her pint of ice cream, some of her hair falling to cover most of her face. Sharon wants to reach out and tuck it back behind Natasha’s ear, just to touch it, and to reveal her face again. Before she’s done more than wrestle with the urge, Natasha takes a strangely deliberate breath in and tucks it back herself, then looks Sharon in the eye.

“I guess…I guess I just want to make it right. After I got out of the Red Room, I was…furious, I was trying to make a point. Don’t fuck with me, don’t think you can use me, you know? Now I’m older, less angry. Revenge…it’s more about balancing my ledger now. And yeah, maybe a little living my best life. How about you?”

Sharon shrugs. “I haven’t exactly got as much reason for revenge as any of you. Or at least, it’s not as personal for me. I haven’t lost as much,” she admits.

“That’s not a bad thing. I’m glad you haven’t.”

“Still, I want to make it right too. Burn off HYDRA heads however I can.”

“You could just walk away though. No one would have blamed you if you’d gone with a career change, after SHIELD fell.” Natasha cocks her head to the side and studies Sharon. “Why didn’t you? Is it just the legacy factor?”

From anyone else, the question would rankle, but Sharon doesn’t detect anything but honest curiosity from Natasha. And hey, Sharon’s the one who kicked off this round of personal questions in the first place.

“No, not entirely. I love my job. And I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I made myself into the kind of person who could do this job, you know? Who _wants_ to do this job. I’m not walking away from that now.”

Natasha nods. “Me neither.” She sets her now empty pint of ice cream down on the coffee table. “I should go, or I’ll fall asleep on your couch.”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

Natasha smiles, and kisses her on the cheek. “Another time,” she says, husky and sincere, like a promise. “Thank you for the ice cream. And the company.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

A few days after Steve and Natasha return from their mission, Steve knocks on Sharon’s door.

“Hey Sharon, do you have a minute?”

“Sure, what’s up?”

“I just wanted to work something out with you ahead of time, for your detail. Uh, can I come inside?” He shoots a shifty look over his shoulder towards his own apartment’s door. “Don’t want Bucky to hear,” he says quietly.

Sharon raises her eyebrows and lets him in. Of course, she gives her security feeds a quick look too as she gestures Steve towards her kitchen table, and when she sees those are clear, she hastily gathers up her dishes from dinner off the table. She can practically hear her mom’s gasp of dismay that Captain America has seen that she doesn’t always bother to put her dishes in the sink right away. She does at least go through the usual polite offers of a drink, so she’s not the worst hostess ever.

“So, what are you keeping secret from Bucky?”

“Nothing bad! I just want to take him out, on a real date, you know? I wanted to clear it with you ahead of time. And, well, I wanted to take him out to a real nice place. Really treat him right, like I couldn’t do before the war, or during it…”

“Oh my god, are you going to _propose_ ?” asks Sharon, only half joking, because shit, maybe he _is_.

Steve’s eyes go wide. “What? No! We haven’t even gone out on a date yet!”

“Wait, really? Ever?”

“Really. Never. Haven’t had a chance, what with…everything,” says Steve, gesturing vaguely.

“You two went to the farmer’s market like three weeks ago. And had brunch at that new French-Brazilian fusion place the other month. And you spent like, four hours in that bookstore, being all handsy and giggly—”

Sharon had felt like a creeper lurking at the end of the aisle as they spoke to each other, low and private, sharing this or that book, touching all the time in sweet, unshowy ways like Bucky’s hand at the small of Steve’s back, or Steve leaning on Bucky’s shoulder. She’d grabbed a book from the shelf at random and tried not to melt into a puddle of self-pity and pathetic daydreaming about having a bookstore date with Natasha.

Steve stares at her with a confused furrow in his brow. “Yeah, so…?”

“Those are dates?” she says slowly.

“Those aren’t dates,” Steve scoffs. “I told you, I want to do this right. Be…romantic.” Now he’s blushing. It’s cute. She tells him so.

“Aww, that’s cute. Okay, so you want to go on a real, romantic date. I can keep some more distance, and obviously whatever you do in your apartment is your business, but I can’t let you ditch the detail when you go out.”

It’s not that she thinks Bucky’s a flight risk at this point, or even an unknowing sleeper agent, and she knows they can look after themselves if HYDRA does make a move. But she’s still going to do her job, even if Steve Rogers gives her the big sad puppy eyes while going on about wanting to do something romantic for his boyfriend.

“Right, of course,” says Steve as he nods. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you first. I’m going to get reservations, but I just wanted to clear it with you before. If you could just sit at a different table…”

“Of course, I’m not going to third wheel your date night,” says Sharon wryly. Just the thought of it is cringingly awkward, like being some old-timey chaperone who’s there to make sure no funny business happens before there are rings on fingers. “I just need a clear line of sight to all the exits, I won’t be eavesdropping on you. There’s no operational reason to.”

There’s the Sharon’s-a-snoop reason to, but she’ll have to resist the urge. Steve grins at her, wide and relieved.

“Thank you! I’ll book the reservations for Friday at 8:00.”

* * *

When Sharon looks up the restaurant Steve picked, she sees that it’s fancy enough that she suspects Steve pulled the “I’m Captain America” card to get reservations on such relatively short notice. Everything in the photos of the place screams tasteful and expensive. It has two Michelin stars, and there are no prices on the website. She has to dig around for her most impressive little black dress for the occasion, just to be sure she’ll make it past the maitre d’. It’s apparently the kind of restaurant that turns people away for not wearing ties.

Steve and Bucky are wearing ties. They’re both dressed in expensive-looking suits, Steve in a tasteful blue number, and Bucky in a gray suit that’s suspiciously well-tailored. She’s been following his movements for weeks now, and she’s never seen him step foot in a tailor’s, let alone a clothes store, so she has no idea where the hell he managed to get such a nice suit. The internet, probably.

“Looking good, boys,” she says when Steve lets her in to their place.

“You too,” says Bucky as he steps out into the living room. “Thanks for going along with this,” he adds, just shyly enough that she knows he means it.

“Of course. Couldn’t say no to your guy wanting to be romantic.”

Steve blushes. “Sharon!”

“I’d have been perfectly happy just going to a steakhouse,” says Bucky. He’s finishing tying his tie as he speaks. “We don’t have to make up for years’ worth of diner double dates all in one go.”

Steve elbows him and gives him a significant look. “You always wanted to try a proper rich people restaurant, remember? Like one of the ones that wouldn’t even hire you as a waiter ‘cause even the waiters had to be rich?”

Bucky squints at Steve before whatever memory it is dawns on him. “Oh yeah. Right! Yes. That’s right. Jesus, can you still not tie a tie, Rogers, that’s crooked as shit.”

Bucky fusses with Steve’s admittedly crooked tie, and Sharon narrows her eyes at them, suspicious. But Steve’s busy giving Bucky a soppy look and Bucky’s smiling a little like he doesn’t mind that he always has to tie Steve’s tie, and ugh. All this _romance_. She clears her throat and they both startle.

“Right. So. I just wanted to go over the restaurant’s layout and our exit plan in case anything goes wrong.” She pulls up the restaurant’s layout on her phone and shows it to them. “The layout means I’ll be sitting a few tables away here, and in the event of any security incidents, I need you two to leave through the kitchen here…”

If a security detail, detailed exit strategy, and staggered entrance into the restaurant leech some of the romance out of the date, Steve and Bucky don’t seem to notice or mind; on the way to the restaurant, they’re entirely caught up in each other. She gets kind of soft-hearted about it until she tunes in to what they’re saying.

“I hope you’re prepared for me to order every single dessert on the menu.”

Steve sighs. “Is this part of living your best life?”

“Yes! I don’t know why you aren’t! It’s the future, we’re rich, YOLO.”

“YOLO. Right. That is…demonstrably untrue in our case,” says Steve, and Bucky laughs.

“More dessert for me.”

“No way, we’re sharing, Barnes.”

“Hmm. Only if you win at footsie.”

“How do you _win_ at footsie—”

So romantic. True love.

* * *

The restaurant doesn’t look like the kind of place where people dine alone. At least, not if they want to eat in the main dining room like Sharon has to in order to keep Steve and Bucky in her sights. As the waiter directs her to a cluster of two-person tables, Sharon resigns herself to pretending that she’s been stood up. Maybe she’ll be able to get a free dessert out of it, if she can squeeze some tears out. But when she and the waiter arrive at her table, located at the exact right distance for her to be able to see but not hear Steve and Bucky who are being seated four tables away, Sharon sees that one of the seats at her table is already occupied. Natasha is sitting there, looking stunning and elegant in a clingy, dark midnight blue dress.

She stands to greet Sharon, eyes sparkling. “Well, aren’t you a pleasant surprise. And it seems like _someone_ has finally learned how to lie,” she says, cutting an amused glance towards Steve.

Sharon accepts the kiss on the cheek on autopilot, and gets a heady whiff of Natasha’s perfume, something smoky and floral that promises dark and lovely things.

“You look amazing,” says Natasha as she sits back down, her eyes lingering on Sharon’s bare collarbones, and Sharon almost feels it like a touch, nerves in her skin tingling under the attention.

She’s really glad she wore her most impressive little black dress now.

“Thanks. Um, that’s a really gorgeous color on you,” Sharon says, which is an understatement. Natasha gleams as brilliant as a diamond set against a velvet jewelry box. “Did Steve put you up to this?”

Their waiter melts away, almost as discreetly as a spy would.

“Yup. I was under the impression I’d be covering for you on the senior citizens’ date night.”

They both look over at Steve and Bucky, who are pretending to study their menus. Sharon’s phone buzzes: _just thought you’d like some company!_ reads the text from Bucky, and oh, okay. She sees what’s happening now. She glares over at them until Bucky peeks over his menu, all wide, innocent eyes. She gives him her best dead shark eyes, until he jerks his head at Natasha and waggles his eyebrows in a deeply ridiculous fashion. She has to look away or risk laughing.

“Have to admit, I’m glad you’re here. I figured I was going to have to pretend I’d been stood up,” Sharon tells Natasha.

“Oh, but that could’ve been fun! I bet you could have gotten the waiter to feel bad enough for you to keep the wine coming.”

“I was thinking I could get a free dessert,” confesses Sharon, and they both smile at each other.

The waiter returns with menus and a smile. “Welcome, ladies,” he says, and then goes on at length about the specials and the farm-to-table food and the chef’s vision, as if Sharon cares. She’s busy staring at the perfect fox-red fall of Natasha’s hair and the swell of her breasts. A clatter of silverware breaks the spell, and heat climbs up her neck when she turns her attention to the waiter.

Sharon orders a glass of wine at random, then scans the restaurant for any potential threats. There are none, of course, and when she looks back at Natasha, she has her chin on her hand and she’s looking at Sharon with shining eyes, patient and—hungry, maybe. Sharon’s not feeling like a shark now; her heart is going rabbit fast.

“Steve picked a good night for this,” says Natasha, and nods towards a table at Sharon’s 4 o’clock. “The Italian ambassador is here, so there’s already security.”

“Oh. Good. That’s—good.”

A waiter comes by to pour water into their glasses, and Sharon welcomes the brief pause. It takes a ludicrous amount of effort to keep her hands on the menu instead of fiddling with her hair. Sharon casts around for a topic of conversation—the Italian ambassador? Steve and Bucky’s date? HYDRA?—god, she’s out of practice at this. But if she wants this thing with Natasha to go anywhere, she can’t be constantly talking about work.

Sharon settles on, “Hey, so how’s your try a hobby a week thing going?”

Natasha’s eyebrows go up in a pleased kind of way. “Oh, I’ve kind of slowed down, actually, it was harder to keep up with on the road. I’ve stuck with a couple of them for longer though.”

“Yeah? Is your hobby no longer trying new hobbies?”

“Maybe not!” Natasha reaches for her clutch and pulls out her phone to show her a photo. “I’m pretty into motivational embroidery.”

That doesn’t sound like a very Natasha-like hobby, but then she gets a look at said embroidery. It’s lovely and delicate: perfect, pretty flowers, twined around cursive text that reads _Take on the Devil in a Knife Fight_. There’s a small dagger embroidered at the end.

“Oh my god, that’s amazing.”

“It’s really relaxing. And I can do it pretty easily anywhere.”

Sharon grins at Natasha. “I have got to see a photo of you with an embroidery hoop while you’re, I don’t know, on a stakeout or whatever.”

“No, knitting is for stakeouts. The needles can double as a weapon.”

“Of course,” says Sharon. “Knit anything good so far?”

Natasha swipes a few times and shows her the phone again. It’s a photo of a misshapen tube of purple yarn; Sharon can’t quite tell if it’s a scarf that’s gone awry, or maybe a toeless single sock. Leg warmer?

“Not really,” says Natasha with equanimity. “I was thinking of trying whittling next. Or maybe jewelry making.”

“Get a side hustle going on Etsy,” Sharon suggests, and takes a sip of the wine the waiter offers for tasting. All nice wines taste pretty much the same to Sharon, which would probably make the waiter want to throw her out, so she makes a show of carefully tasting the wine before nodding in approval. The waiter seems gratified, and fills their wine glasses.

When he leaves, Natasha smirks at her and says, “It just tastes like wine to you, doesn’t it.”

“Yup.”

Natasha leans in close. “Me too.”

“A Michelin-starred restaurant might be wasted on me,” admits Sharon.

The food might be wasted on Sharon, but Natasha’s company isn’t. For once, they barely talk about work, and yet the conversation still comes easy. They talk about music, Sharon’s love of awful action movies and Natasha’s love of cheesy dance movies, the food they’re eating and that neither of them has a sophisticated enough palate or a small enough appetite to truly appreciate. Sure, the tiny medallion of steak artfully drizzled with a mushroom gravy is delicious, but Sharon eats it in a minute flat and is still hungry afterward.

“How much of a faux pas would it be to ask the waiter if that was the real, actual main course, or if it was some sort of pre-main course?” she asks.

Natasha’s clearly either more used to this kind of restaurant or just smarter than Sharon, because she’s taking tiny bites of her sous vide salmon to make it last longer. “A pretty big faux pas, probably.”

“I am not cut out for the high life.”

Neither are Steve and Bucky. This whole outing is worth it just to spy on Steve and Bucky’s horrified reactions to the minuscule but gorgeously plated portions. Sharon very nearly makes a scene by laughing too loud at Natasha’s muttered impersonations of Steve.

It’s a good dinner, and, unless Sharon’s totally reading things wrong, it’s a good date too. Of course, it could just be a good friend date. They part ways at the valet with nothing more than another hug and kiss on the cheek, and Sharon drives Steve and Bucky back to their apartments.

“So?” asks Bucky when they’re at their respective doors. “Did you have a good time?”

“Sure. But you know the point isn’t for me to have a good time, right? I’m on the clock. And you’re not being subtle. I thought we agreed that I’d try asking her out _after_ this detail is over?”

“I don’t remember agreeing to that. And seriously, we just thought it’d be less weird if you had some company, that’s all.”

“It’s for operational security,” adds Steve.

Sharon narrows her eyes at Bucky, but his face maintains its perfect innocence, and Steve looks similarly wide-eyed and earnest.

“Uh huh. Okay. Well, good night, boys.”

* * *

 

The next week, Bucky asks if he’s cleared to take Steve on a picnic. Sharon says yes, figuring she can read a book and keep an eye on them from a few yards away while they canoodle on a picnic blanket or whatever. Half an hour into a picnic date that seems to consist of Steve and Bucky alternately roughhousing and lobbing grapes at each other’s mouths, with the occasional break to make out, Natasha jogs past in workout clothes, flushed and glowing with exertion in the warmth of the afternoon. Her hair is curling with sweat, and it’s intolerably cute.

In the five seconds it takes Sharon to fully absorb this sight, her brain helpfully provides her with an entire daydream scenario of going running with Natasha, then going to brunch, then going back to Sharon’s place for sweet and slow Sunday sex, and then— _get a grip, Sharon_. This is some spot-your-crush-in-the-cafeteria level high school bullshit and Sharon is too old for it.

Sharon’s ready to pretend she never saw Natasha and fumbles for a book to cover her face before Natasha can see her looking dumb and smitten, but too late. Natasha spots Sharon and stops, waving at her. Sharon smiles and waves back, half-hoping that will be the end of this interaction so that she can avoid embarrassing herself by somehow broadcasting her crush. No joy. Natasha jogs over to where Sharon is sitting on the grass.

“Hey! I didn’t realize this park was on your running route.”

“It’s not,” Sharon says, and gestures at Steve and Bucky a few yards behind her, then lifts up her book. “I’m third wheeling a picnic date today.”

Natasha grins and flops down next to her. The faint smell of her clean sweat reminds Sharon of dancing with her, and the memory heats her up more than the sunshine.

“Too bad, I was going to ask if you wanted to come help me try out my new hobby,” says Natasha.

“What’s this week’s hobby?”

“Antiquing.”

“Nice, that’s a good one. It makes for a good excuse for day trips out to the country.”

“You’ll have to show me some time.”

“Oh! Yeah, of course. I’d love that.”

Sharon feels a prickle on her neck, like someone’s watching her. She does a casual sweep of her surroundings, and sees no security threats, unless you count the college kids ineptly throwing a frisbee around a dozen yards away. No threats, just Steve and Bucky, being really bad at acting casual. She sighs. Bucky really wasn’t giving up on this wingman thing, was he.

“Mind if I cool down here?” asks Natasha, already stretching out her calves.

“Go for it.”

Natasha sticks around for about half an hour, and they chat about nothing much: Sharon’s book, Natasha’s cat (back with her instead of Barton now that’s she’s back in DC), the latest season of Dog Cops. No matter what machinations Bucky and/or Steve had in mind, it’s not a date. But it’s nice.

“So, you just happened to pick a park Natasha goes on runs in, huh?” Sharon asks Bucky once the picnic is all packed up.

“Yeah, what a coincidence!”

* * *

If anyone had asked her, she’d have absolutely vetoed Steve and Bucky’s next date night. Super soldiers should not go bowling at a normal, civilian bowling alley. It’s legitimately a hazard to the poor, innocent public, especially when one of said super soldiers has a robot arm with which to toss bowling balls.

And yet, here she is in a bowling alley on a Thursday night, wedged in an aisle between a kids’ birthday party, and Steve and Bucky. Natasha is, of course, already there, sitting in one of the chairs to lace up her bowling shoes. She smiles when she sees Sharon.

“Who goes bowling alone?” asks Bucky. Rhetorically, she presumes. She ignores him.

“Fancy seeing you here,” says Natasha.

“Hey,” says Sharon, and sits next to her to put her own rented bowling shoes on. “How’d they get you here this time?”

“Steve just suggested going bowling. I’ve never been, you know. Maybe this can be my next hobby.”

After they go a few rounds, Sharon suggests that maybe it should be Natasha’s next career. She’s absolutely demolishing Sharon’s score with strike after strike. Sharon can’t say she entirely minds, given the view each time Natasha sends the ball down the lane: Natasha’s wearing a pair of jeans that cling very nicely to her generous ass.

“You missed your calling as a professional bowler,” Sharon says as the last pin teeters over.

“Nice to know I have a fallback career.” Natasha walks away from the lane, her hips swaying in a way Sharon can’t help but read as flirty, and she marks her score down with a smug grin.

Steve and Bucky, meanwhile, are sending balls down the lane with all the force of cannonballs. Steve’s aim turns out to be shockingly terrible for someone who chucks a shield at people as part of his literal job. Bucky mocks him relentlessly.

“I cannot believe that you would genuinely be better at this game if you were using your shield.”

“Shut up! A ball is a totally different thing from a shield! Also, stop breaking the pins! You don’t have to use your robot arm, you know. I think that’s actually cheating.”

Bucky affects an affronted look. “Hey, I’m an amputee! My prosthetic doesn’t count as cheating.”

He uses said prosthetic to send a curveball down the lane, and it’s going far faster than a ball that heavy should be going in a bowling alley meant for average humans. When it hits the pins, the impact shatters a couple of them, and all but one of the pins falls. Sharon hadn’t even known you _could_ break bowling pins.

“We’re gonna get kicked out,” murmurs Natasha. Her lips are pursed, but her eyes are bright with evident delight.

Sharon imagines that report, or god forbid that news headline, and winces. “God, I hope not.”

They don’t, in fact, get kicked out, and manage to finish their respective games with a minimum of property damage. Natasha wins their game, and Bucky wins his, and there’s a brief round of arguing over whether the winners or losers should cover dinner. They sneak out of the bowling alley before anyone can notice the property damage, and head to a grill a few blocks away for dinner, where they engage in a lot of heated debate over appropriate bowling tactics. It’s a pretty fun night, Sharon has to admit, and it gets even better when Natasha gives her a lingering, long hug before leaving in her own car.

“Sorry you keep being drafted as the fourth wheel,” says Sharon.

Natasha smiles and tucks a piece of Sharon’s hair behind her ear. “I really don’t mind.”

Sharon wants to burst into a literal fire of sexual frustration. Natasha maybe notices, because her smile turns half shy, half teasing before she gets in her Camaro with a wave.

“Yeah, she is absolutely into you,” says Bucky as she drives off, and Steve nods in agreement, a little wide-eyed.

“Okay, okay, I get it!” She glares at Bucky, who smiles widely with beatific smugness.

“Double dates work,” he says, and Steve rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, no, they don’t. The years 1935 to 1941 prove that pretty well,” says Steve.

“Those double dates worked out fine for me, I don’t know what you’re talking about. So. Time for you to woman up, Carter. Remember action item four.”

“Yeah, yeah, fuck HYDRA, live my best life. I’m still not starting anything until I’m off your detail, Barnes. So hurry it up at the Pentagon.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says with a crisp salute.

* * *

After the bowling date, Sharon thought she’d be spared having to be the security detail-mandated third or fourth wheel on any more of Steve and Bucky’s dates, what with Bucky having made his point and all. And for a few weeks, she _was_ spared, and she figured Bucky was doing his best to hold up his end of the bargain. Plus, they’ve all been busy: Steve and Natasha end up on a couple Avengers missions that demand their attention, and between the missions and the usual HYDRA task force work, Steve and Bucky seem happy to stick to Netflix and chill and hanging out with Sam Wilson rather than anything more involved. Which means that Sharon’s had to stick with texting back and forth with Natasha. A little disappointing compared to going out together, even with her senior citizen charges, but Sharon can live with it for a few more weeks.

She should have known better than to let her guard down. Bucky may have been satisfied with making his point, but Steve has his own ideas, and proposes a new date night outing. She figures she’ll be spared another surprise double date, given his previous skepticism about their efficacy, and he promises that Natasha’s vetted the location: _just want to make sure Bucky doesn’t find out, I want it to be a surprise!_  Sharon’s not so sure Bucky likes surprises much, actually, but whatever, it’s Steve’s date. All that matters to her is that Natasha confirms the location’s clear, with a text that ends in some hear no evil and see no evil monkey emojis, that are, in retrospect, vaguely ominous. When they arrive at Steve’s date night pick, Sharon realizes why.  

“An escape room,” Sharon says flatly.

She knows what an escape room is, but she hadn’t thought it was the kind of thing Steve would be into: a “locked” room full of puzzles the participants have to solve in order to get out. It’s a trend that she figures will last a year or two, tops, until the novelty wears off and escape rooms are relegated to the usual seasonal outbreak of haunted houses and pumpkin patches, maybe eking out a profit year-round as a venue for corporate team building events trying too hard to be fun.  

“It seems like fun!” insists Steve, undeterred by Sharon and Bucky’s lack of enthusiasm as he opens the storefront’s door for them.

Sharon shares a look of deep skepticism with Bucky as they step inside, where Bucky proceeds to prowl around the surprisingly plush lobby of what had seemed like an unassuming Georgetown storefront from the outside. Instead of the bland and seedy lobby area Sharon had vaguely expected, there are chandeliers made of antlers, and leather couches that look like they came from one of those minimalist Scandinavian furniture stores. Inexplicably, there are also old-timey painted portraits of people with animal heads on all the walls. It all has the feeling of a place trying to be quirky and impressive, but mostly it just puts Sharon in mind of the waiting area for a theme park ride with a muddled concept.

Weird decor or not, this place clearly isn’t a ramshackle operation. The lobby is neat and clean, and the glossy promotional materials are well-designed. Bucky seems occupied enough examining the paintings, so she follows Steve to the marble reception desk that runs along one side of the room, where a smartly dressed young man is sitting.

“Welcome to Escape Room Live, Washington DC’s top-rated escape room experience! Do you have a reservation for your party?”

“Yes, I have a reservation for four under Rogers.”

Another double date, or is Wilson their fourth? Treacherous hope and excitement flutter in Sharon’s stomach at the prospect of seeing Natasha. She should probably admit that she’s got it bad, at this point.

“Another double date, Rogers?”

“Four is the minimum reservation,” says Steve, all innocence.

“That it is! And yup, I see your reservation right here, sir. Please, take a seat in our lounge area. You’ll be in the Titanic room tonight, and we’ll begin your experience in fifteen minutes.”

“The Titanic?” asks Steve, frowning now.

“Yes!” says the receptionist with a broad smile. “The Game Master will explain everything.”

That doesn’t bode well. Sharon sighs, and heads for the lounge.

Natasha’s sitting at one of the tables there, leafing through a brochure with interest, and just the sight of her makes Sharon feel warm all over, a full-body flush of happy nerves. If Sharon were a better person, maybe her attention wouldn’t have been immediately drawn to Natasha’s crossed legs, to the lush and strong line of Natasha’s thigh in her tight-fitting dark jeans. If Natasha notices the attention, she doesn’t let on. She smiles when Sharon and Steve join her at the table, and Sharon’s sure she’s not imagining the warm and pleased deepening of that smile when Natasha looks at her.

They exchange greetings, then Natasha turns to Steve with a raised eyebrow. “An escape room, Rogers? Don’t we get enough of this kind of thing on the job, or do you not remember the thing at Vozrozhdeniya Island?”

“This is completely different. It’s about puzzles,” says Steve. “And you cleared it!”

“I did, but I was judging you while I did. And I thought you were dragging Sam with you. Wasn’t he the one who talked this place up?”

Bucky returns from his circuit around the lobby and reception area, scowling.

“He did, and if this ends up being terrible or boring, I’m blaming him.”

Steve throws an arm around Bucky’s shoulders but otherwise ignores his griping. “He had a thing, couldn’t make it, I didn’t want to reschedule the reservation and be out my deposit.”

Steve’s gotten better at lying, thinks Sharon, and exchanges a half-proud, half-amused look with Natasha.

“Uh huh. Sure,” says Natasha.

Bucky’s unconvinced. “Whatever. We couldn’t have just, I don’t know, done a jigsaw puzzle at home?”

“Or played Clue?” suggests Sharon.

“Some wild date night ideas you two have, huh?” says Natasha.

“It’s something new to try, come on! What happened to _we have to get out in the world and try cool new future things_?” protests Steve.

Bucky crosses his arms and narrows his eyes at Steve. “Oh, I see how it is. This is you getting me back for that thing with the—”

“It’s not,” Steve interrupts hastily. “It’s totally not. I just love—puzzles.”

Natasha mouths _wow_ at her, and Sharon widens her eyes in an expression that she hopes conveys, _yeah, I’ve seen a lot of this old marrieds bickering by now_.

“Okay. And did I hear that guy say it’s Titanic themed?” asks Bucky, all disapproving eyebrows. “That seems like it’s in poor taste.”

Natasha laughs. “What, too soon?”

“I mean, yeah, kind of,” says Steve.

“It’s been almost a hundred years,” says Sharon.

Bucky winces and shakes his head. “Not to us. My uncle William worked on the ship back when it was in dry dock in Ireland, and he’d still cry about what a shame it was that it sank whenever he got too deep in his cups.”

“So, neither of you have watched _Titanic_ yet, I’m guessing,” says Natasha.

By the time they finish explaining the cultural phenomenon that is _Titanic_ the movie to Steve and Bucky, the “Game Master” appears to give them the whole escape room spiel. Steve and Bucky aren’t too receptive to her attempts to build up the tragedy of the Titanic and the roleplaying aspect of attempting to escape a fake cabin on the doomed ship, but Natasha’s making a show of listening intently.

Sharon’s only got one question to ask though. “What’s the fastest anyone’s made it out?”

“Oh, it’s not a competition!” says the Game Master with a smile.

“There’s only so many life boats. I think it matters how fast we get out,” says Natasha.

Sharon nods. “Yeah, and I know it’s women and children first, but I’m not about to miss the last life boat and end up on a floating door, all ‘I’ll never let go,’ before I totally let go—”

“Jack really could have fit on that door,” Natasha mutters.

“Right? I wouldn’t push you off our floating door.”

“Aww, thanks!”

“There aren’t, uh, actual life boats, it’s just a—”

Bucky and Steve have perked up now too. “Is there a high score, wall of fame type of thing anywhere?” asks Steve, overly casual.

The Game Master sighs, and some of her professional cheer falls away in favor of dead shark eyes that give Sharon a run for her money.

“There’s a wall of shame in our break room. I’ll remind you that we have closed circuit cameras in all the escape rooms, and leave you all to contemplate the kinds of activities that get customers documented on the wall of shame.”

With that, she directs them downstairs to a somewhat cramped basement level, where there’s a hallway full of closed doorways and not much else. She leads them to one of the doors and opens it, revealing a cramped room that does look reminiscent of a guest cabin on a ship, complete with porthole and all. Their goal is apparently to get out of the room before the “Titanic” “sinks.”

“Seriously, real people died on the Titanic,” mutters Steve as the Game Master locks them in.

“You picked this place, Steve,” says Natasha.

“I kind of wanted to do the mummy room,” he says, and he starts poking around.

Bucky eyes the door and clenches his left hand into a fist. The mechanics inside his arm whir faintly. “We could be done in thirty seconds if I punched through the door.”

“I vote Bucky punches through the door,” says Sharon.

Steve gives them both the Captain America is disappointed in you face. “You can’t punch through the door, Bucky.”

“Why not? It’s what I’d actually do if I were actually in this situation.”

The Game Master’s voice fills the room. “You are not allowed to punch through the door, sir. You will be liable for any property damage you incur in the room.”

Bucky glares up at the closed circuit camera, but he does step away from the door.

“Maybe if we take the door off its hinges…?” suggests Sharon.

Steve’s _Captain America is disappointed in you_ face shifts to a pout, and he whines, “Puzzles, this is about puzzles, c’mon you guys, play along.”

Natasha eyes the ceiling. “I bet there’s a crawlspace up in the ceiling. It’s lower than it should be.”

The intercom comes on again. “Please just solve the puzzles oh my god.”

“The Game Master disapproves of lateral thinking,” Sharon tells Natasha, and they share a grin.

They do all finally get to work trying to solve the puzzles, though the more they examine the room, the more Bucky objects to the rationale behind said puzzles.

“It doesn’t make sense! Why would puzzles trap you inside your own cabin, that you paid for, on the Titanic!”

Sharon doesn’t disagree, but the more she pokes around the room, the more she gets into the spirit of this thing. She’d watched _Titanic_ at a formative age, and even this cheap recreation is stirring up her long-forgotten romantic daydreams about it. The North Star Line letterhead in the desk is a really nice touch, she thinks, as she holds the paper up to the light. The impression of numbers on the paper is faintly visible.

“You’re not using your imagination enough. You and your lover have been trapped in the room by your terrible fiance, who found out about your forbidden affair—”

Bucky laughs and throws one of the pillows from the cabin’s bed at her before she can continue her excellent story.

“Just accept that it’s a game, Barnes,” says Natasha. She takes a portrait off of the wall and uncovers a safe. “Ah ha!”

“Oh! There’s a number written under the nightstand drawer—”

“And one on this paper,” says Sharon, and gets an adorably excited grin from Steve.

“We just need two more for the safe combination—” says Steve, and starts looking under the bed and around the porthole for the other numbers

“No we don’t,” says Bucky. “May I?”

Natasha moves out of the way. “No punching it open. And no superstrength either,” she warns, and Bucky winks at her.

“Don’t need superstrength. Just super hearing.”

Bucky puts his ear up against the safe and starts spinning the lock, stopping when he presumably hears the click of the lock’s tumblers falling into place. It takes him little more than a minute to have the safe unlocked and open, revealing a key.

It’s not the key to the door out, unfortunately, just to a locked drawer that reveals more puzzles. The success is motivating though, and they make quick work of the rest of the puzzles, without property damage even. They’re out of the room within fifteen minutes.

“Good job, team,” says Steve.

The Game Master comes out of a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY, and hands them all lollipops and party hats.

“Congratulations, you’ve all made it off the Titanic. You solved my Titanic riddle without any property damage!”

“So are we on the Wall of Shame or the Wall of Fame?” asks Sharon.

“Most people finish that room in about an hour. You’re half an hour early.”

“You guys should have some more challenging options, really get the adrenaline going,” suggests Natasha. “I remember I had a training exercise once where if I couldn’t hack the lock, then the room would fill with gas—”

“Yeah, no, these rooms are meant for civilians, ma’am. Thank you for not engaging in property damage, but please don’t visit us again. Have a great night!”

On their way out, Sharon gives Steve and Bucky some space to walk ahead of them, doing their lovey-dovey hand holding thing, and hooks her arm through Natasha’s. This, she tells herself, doesn’t count as starting anything. This is just some harmless flirting, some testing the waters.

“Adrenaline, huh? That your kind of date night?” she asks Natasha, keeping her voice low.

From the corner of her eye, Sharon sees Natasha smile one of her Mona Lisa smiles. “Maybe. I haven’t been on many dates, actually.”

Sharon summons up every single ounce of game in her possession and leans down towards Natasha’s ear. It takes a lot of effort to avoid creepily taking in a long breath of her scent: sharp and citrusy today, with some underlying coconut sweetness that might be whatever she puts in her hair. But Sharon’s going for seductive, not serial killer, so she keeps it light and brings her lips close to Natasha’s ear to say, “We’ll just have to find out, I guess.”

There’s no change in Natasha’s breathing or in her stride, but when Sharon risks a glance over at her, she sees Natasha’s cheeks go pink, and the giddy victory of having caused that is almost as good as an adrenaline rush.

“Yeah, guess we will,” murmurs Natasha.

* * *

Bucky’s finally cleared by the Pentagon and given the go ahead to join the HYDRA task force just three weeks after the escape room double date. Bucky doesn’t cheer or even smile when Rhodes delivers the news, but the faint, ever-present tension that always keeps Bucky’s spine straight and his eyes watchful when he’s in the Pentagon melts away for just a few seconds.

“You’re still going to be in for some congressional hearings, eventually, and a PR shitshow when we go public with you, but welcome to the task force, Sergeant Barnes. Hope you don’t mind being seconded to the Avengers whenever some supervillain pulls some bullshit.”

“I don’t mind. Thank you, sir.”

“Carter, you’re free to go back to the CIA for your own debriefing. Thanks for sticking it out,” Rhodes tells her, and shakes her hand.

Bucky surprises her with a hug, but it’s a pleasant surprise. It turns out he’s a good hugger, warm and enveloping, neither too loose nor too tight, and Sharon realizes she’s going to miss working with him at the Pentagon, his quiet competence and his weird sense of humor.

“Thank you,” he murmurs into her ear. “I know you didn’t have to take this assignment.”

“You’re welcome,” she tells him. “You were a way better assignment than Steve.”

He’s grinning when he pulls back, and then he waggles his eyebrows. “Time for action item four, Carter. No more excuses.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she says, but she’s grinning too, because _finally_.

She promises to stay in touch, and means it, even apart from how she suspects she’s going to be getting a lot of texts from Bucky demanding updates on her love life. She probably won’t even mind giving them to him, after all his dedication to being her wingman.

* * *

 

 

She types up her final reports on her security detail, writes up an assessment of Bucky, and goes in for her end of assignment debriefing. She’s somewhat nervous about being called to account for the lack of detail in her reports, but throughout the term of the assignment, she hadn’t gotten any orders to provide more detail, so she figures it’s okay. This, she reminds herself, was a CYA assignment for everyone involved.

“So, everything was nice and quiet on your detail?” asks the deputy director when she meets with him.

“Yes sir.”

“And Barnes isn’t a danger to national security?”

“He’s not a danger to anyone but HYDRA.”

The deputy director sighs. “Good enough. He’s the Avengers’ and Rhodes’ problem now.”

“Sir,” says Sharon with careful neutrality.

“You still want to work on the HYDRA beat, Carter?”

She remembers Natasha saying that she could just walk away. If she wants to, Sharon can say no right now, call her portion of SHIELD’s tainted ledger balanced, and get put on some other assignment, sent to some station who knows where to do “normal” espionage. She could consider her part in the fight against HYDRA done and leave the rest to the capable hands of people like Natasha and Colonel Rhodes and Steve and Bucky.

But there are so many HYDRA heads left to burn off, and so many people she cares about doing the burning. Sharon wants to stand with them.

“If that’s an option, yes sir, I would.”

She’s not done yet when it comes to HYDRA. Both for Aunt Peggy’s sake, and her own.

“Good. Agent Marcos had good things to say about the work you did in Europe, and of course the Sokovia operation was a success. If you want it, you’ve got a posting to the unit that’s tracking down all the HYDRA moles in our and our allies’ intelligence agencies.”

“I want it,” says Sharon. “Where will I be posted?”

“At Langley for now, until you’ve got enough intel to go out in the field. Your unit chief will have the details for you. Take a couple days to wrap up your security detail, then report to Agent Harker. She’ll get you situated,” he says, and stands to shake her hand. “Thank you for your discretion and patience on this assignment, Agent Carter. It has been appreciated.”

“Thank you, sir.”

* * *

 

As much as she wants to immediately text Natasha to ask her on a date, Sharon has to get her life together first. She has to move out of the apartment across from Steve and Bucky, and find a new place closer to Langley. She has to get settled in her new unit, and probably do a ton of unit transfer paperwork and report reading to catch up. She has to go visit Aunt Peggy, and let her friends and family know she’s between field assignments. Amid all the rush and bustle, she feels a brief pang for the comparatively sedate pace of being on Bucky’s detail. And a pang of actual hunger, because now she has to feed herself, and her sandwiches are disappointing compared to the hearty dinners Bucky had shared with her.

She does exchange a few texts with Natasha amid all that, but they’re just quick check in and congratulations texts, since Natasha’s apparently off on some short mission for Hill.

 _Congrats on the new assignment_ , texts Natasha. _And thanks again for agreeing to be Barnes’ detail. I know I kind of boxed you into it, but I trusted you to do it right_.

Sharon flushes with pleasure at the praise.

_Thanks, that means a lot. Let me know when you’re back in town? I’d love to hang out without the super soldier grandpas_

_Me too :D_

She also gets texts from Bucky. _HAVE YOU ASKED HER OUT YET_

_I know you know texts aren’t telegrams, barnes_

_HAVE YOU ASKED HER OUT YET STOP RESPONSE REQUESTED STOP -JBB_

Sharon absolutely will not admit to him that this makes her laugh.

 _We both know that’s not how telegrams work_ , she texts instead. _She’s away on a mission but I’ve tentatively suggested that I intend to ask her out_

_God you two are moving slow as molasses_

_You waited OVER 70 YEARS BARNES_

His 21st century meme education is apparently going well, because he sends her the shrug emoji back.

When Natasha does finally return from her mission, she shows up at Sharon’s new place wearing her Black Widow catsuit, her hair back in a wavy bob, and carrying a duffel bag that clanks ominously.

“Hey, wanna come break into the house of a guy who’s possibly funding HYDRA?” she asks in a husky voice that she has to know is more sexy than conspiratorial.

Sharon shouldn’t. She really, really shouldn’t. It’s unlikely to be an officially sanctioned op, which makes it plain old B&E if they get caught, but the most action Sharon’s had in months was that HYDRA loser she took down with a well-aimed shopping cart. She wants to _do_ something again.

“Yeah okay. What’s the objective?” asks Sharon, and lets her into the apartment.

Natasha gives her a pleased, dimpled smile, and sets the duffel down with a muted clatter.

“Steal his money. We don’t exactly have a SHIELD budget any more, you know? No requisitions or petty cash, no funding allocations from the DOD. C-4 doesn’t buy itself.”

“Steal Nazi blood money to fund Nazi hunting, got it. Let me just get changed.”

Sharon puts on the kind of athleisure outfit that turns any woman into unremarkable eye candy, just one of the city’s thousands of young professionals or civil servants who’s trying to at least _dress_ like a person who works out, if not actually _be_ one. The goal is to look harmless and hot, and as she gives herself a quick look in the mirror, she thinks she’s succeeded.

Given that Natasha’s eyes flicker appreciatively over her legs in the tight yoga pants, she’s definitely succeeded.

“Will this do?” she asks Natasha.

“Yeah, you’ll do,” Natasha answers with a small, sly smile.

Their eyes meet and the moment catches like a struck match, flaring bright with their mutual desire. But then Natasha gestures towards the blueprints laid out on Sharon’s kitchen table, and it’s like the match is shaken out, nothing but the lingering scent of fire remaining.

Right. There’s a job to do.

Natasha’s got most of the infiltration plan worked out already, so she catches Sharon up and they head out within the hour. Their target’s got the kind of quietly showy security that’s meant to impress and ward off any obvious, brute force incursions, but that’s mostly unprepared for a competent infiltration. It takes Sharon and Natasha forty minutes to get in, and thirty minutes to get out, having relieved the guy of a few million dollars in his supposedly untraceable accounts, plus a somewhat impressive stash of blackmail material that was probably the reason he hadn’t been arrested as a HYDRA asset already.

Once they’re out, Natasha gives her a flirty wink. “I think I can justify skimming a little off the top of these ill-gotten gains if it’s for dinner. Care to join me?”

“Of course,” says Sharon.

It’s late, too late for anywhere to be open but a handful of 24-hour fast food joints, bars, and all-night diners. So they end up at a diner, clean and not too self-consciously retro, where they have breakfast for dinner and pie for dessert while they construct elaborate backstories for the other late-night diners.

“I think our waiter is working on the next great American novel,” says Natasha once he’s out of earshot after refilling their water.

“Yeah? What’s it about?”

Natasha narrows her eyes and taps on her lower lip with her straw. Sharon can’t help how her eyes flicker down to that plush lower lip for a microsecond. Natasha catches her at it anyway and her eyes take on a cat-like tilt of amusement.

“I think...it’s about the ghosts of Arlington, and Abraham Lincoln coming back from the dead to reclaim the presidency.”

Sharon nods solemnly. “Sounds like the next great American novel alright.” She points her chin at the weary, frizzy-haired woman in lavender scrubs sitting at the counter. “I think she’s delivered five babies tonight.” The waiter behind the counter puts an enormous burger in front of the woman. “Hm, make that seven babies.”

It’s silly, goofy fun, and they keep passing increasingly wild stories back and forth until the last bite of peach pie has been eaten. Natasha drops Sharon back off at her place, and before Sharon can invite her up, Natasha says, “Thanks, that was fun,” kisses her cheek, and gets back in her car to drive off, leaving nothing but the echo of her Camaro’s roaring engine.

 _Was that a date?_ wonders Sharon. It felt kind of like a date towards the end there. But then, it could have just been a post-successful mission meal. She contemplates who she can ask about this. None of her civilian friends, that’s for sure. This is one of those things only a fellow secret agent type would understand, and on top of that, probably only something someone who knows Natasha, at least a little bit, could help with. So she texts Bucky. This should count as part of his duties as self-appointed wingman anyway, she reasons.  

_Natasha just took me with her to rob a HYDRA asshole of his Nazi blood money then we went out to a diner for dinner afterwards, is that a date???_

Bucky’s response is less than helpful: _you beautiful queer disasters_.

_NOT HELPFUL_

_Sounds like a nice date to me. Fulfilling multiple action items at once! Efficient and romantic. Thank you for the date night idea._

_You WOULD say that_ , she texts back and throws her phone aside.

Before Sharon can make her own attempt to set up an unambiguous date with Natasha, she ends up stuck at a week-long training exercise at the Farm. When she gets back, Natasha asks her if she’d be up for a hike that weekend, and before Sharon can get her hopes up about this being a proper, nice date, Natasha adds that she could use some help finding an old abandoned SHIELD bunker that might have been re-appropriated by HYDRA.

“It’s probably nothing, but there might be some nasty stuff in there, I’d like some company to check it out,” says Natasha.

“I’d love to!” says Sharon, way too enthusiastic for being invited on what amounts to a mission, and braces herself for a coolly amused response from Natasha. But Natasha just smiles at her gratefully, and gives her the details.

Is she being friendzoned? No, that’s not quite right, is she being teammate-zoned? Sharon honestly can’t tell. The purpose of the outing suggests yes, but the contents of the picnic Natasha brought along suggest no. Surely if this was a pure teammates and friends kind of outing, Natasha would have just brought along MREs or sandwiches or something. Instead, she pulls out a fancy cheese plate, crackers, assorted cured meats, a fruit salad in a tupperware container, and two cans of sparkling wine.

“How did you fit all that in there?” asks Sharon, impressed, and Natasha gives her a mysterious smile.

“I have a lot of varied skills.”

They don’t find the bunker, but the picnic is lovely, and the day is beautiful, crisp and clear, so Sharon doesn’t feel too disappointed about not finding the mystery bunker, and neither does Natasha. In fact, Natasha looks—soft, is the best word Sharon can find. Maybe it’s just the sunshine, or the profusion of lush green growing things that surround them on this mountain trail, and maybe it’s the fact that they’re the only people for miles. Whatever it is, something in Natasha’s expression and body language has relaxed. In the warmth of the afternoon and with the heady alcoholic fizz of the wine, Natasha’s perfect porcelain beauty has flushed into a more natural sort of prettiness, artless and uncultivated.

Sharon feels, for the first time, the stirring of a tender and delicate new feeling in her heart, a spot of warmth like an ember that will, if tended more, slowly—so slowly—turn into a steady flame. This could be more than a long-standing crush, she thinks.

She’s not sure what to do about that.

On the drive back to DC, an odd but pleasant giddiness infects them both: they sing along to songs on the radio and talk about Natasha’s trying new hobbies hobby, and Sharon tells Natasha about the few months she’d thought seriously about pursuing ballet. Natasha confesses that the Red Room’s cover for the young Black Widows was that it was a ballet school, and that maybe that should make her hate it, but she doesn’t. They both heckle and cheer each others’ music choices, and they make tentative plans to go to a concert together. If this really is a date, it’s one of the best ones Sharon has ever had.

By the time they get back to Sharon’s apartment, the sun is low enough in the sky to turn everything its light touches golden and honeyed. It’s too early for dinner to be a plausible excuse to invite Natasha up to her place. But fuck plausible, and fuck this weird dating-not dating limbo.

“Come upstairs with me,” says Sharon. “Have some tea or coffee, or—whatever.”

For just a few seconds, there’s silence, and Natasha’s hands tense on the steering wheel. They relax so quickly that Sharon thinks maybe she imagined the tension.

“Alright,” says Natasha.

As they walk into her apartment, Sharon remembers that it’s kind of a disaster in there. She’s only unpacked the necessities so far, and she sure as hell hasn’t made any real efforts to decorate just yet, so the bareness of the walls gives the whole apartment a sterile feel. Too late though, she’s not about to un-invite Natasha.

“Sorry about the mess, I’m still unpacking.”

“I don’t mind. And hey, you moved in, what, a month or so ago? You’ve got furniture, I think you’re doing okay.”

“Thanks, that’s what I’ve been telling myself. And hey, at least I’ve got the kitchen all set up. Coffee or tea? Or a drink?” asks Sharon, already heading for the kitchen.

“Tea’s fine, thanks,” says Natasha, and looks around the apartment with interest.

There’s not so much to see just yet, but who knows what psychological insights into her Natasha is gaining from examining the labels on her unpacked boxes. It’s the sort of reflexive snoopiness that Sharon can’t help but find charming, and she’s glad she can go to the kitchen to her hide her dumb smile.

“I’ve only got bagged tea, hope that’s okay,” calls out Sharon from the kitchen as she puts some water on to boil.

“Sure. Though remind me to take you to a proper Russian tea sometime. It’s one of the only things I really miss from Russia.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

“So, are your new neighbors better or worse than your former super soldier neighbors?” asks Natasha, coming to join her in the kitchen.

Sharon snorts. “I’ve barely even met these neighbors. But I do miss being invited to dinner by Bucky. He’s a good cook.”

Once the water’s boiling, she pours it over the tea bag and hands a mug to Natasha, then grabs her own, and they settle in the living room. Natasha’s gone unreadable now, face buried in her mug and flushing in the steam, all her earlier softness hidden.

“I had a nice time today,” says Sharon, and hides her wince with a sip of too-hot tea. What a fucking cliche thing to say. “We should do it again some time.”

“What, look for the bunker?”

“Uh, if you want. I was more thinking of the hike and the picnic and, uh, spending time together.”

Natasha smiles down at her mug of tea. “Yeah, that was nice. Thank you for coming with me.”

Sharon takes a deep breath and decides it’s now or never, she has to go for it.

“So. Listen. I’m bi. Which you know, obviously. And I’d like to date you. In a romantic way. I think we’ve already been dating, pretty much? But I’ve been burned before, where a woman I was interested thought we’re just doing friend things, so…I’m putting it out there. It’s fine if all this has just been, you know, friend stuff. But I like you. I want to date you. And I’m going to shut up now before this gets any more awkward.”

Natasha’s eyes on her are wide and very green, but they’re not shocked or surprised. Sharon tries to parse Natasha’s expression, a new one to her: how her slowly coloring face is soft with wonder while her bright eyes betray some fear. She sets her mug of tea on the coffee table, and scoots closer to Sharon on the couch, her eyes not leaving Sharon.

“I think I told you before, I’ve…never really dated anybody. Ever. Not for real,” starts Natasha, her voice rough and deliberate. “So. I’m not sure I’m doing it right. I’m pretty sure I’m _not_ doing it right, actually. But this isn’t just a friend thing. I’m—I like you too. And I want to date you.”

“Yeah?” says Sharon, more breathlessly than she’d meant to.

“Yeah,” says Natasha with a slowly growing smile. “But fair warning. I don’t know how to do this when I mean it. I might hurt you,” she admits.

“So long as you do mean it, we can work it out,” says Sharon, and moves even closer to Natasha on the couch, close enough that their thighs are touching now, close enough that they can feel each other’s heat. Sharon reaches out to take Natasha’s hand, and Natasha holds on with a firm strength that reassures Sharon, her grip warm and calloused and no-nonsense.

Natasha’s smile turns lopsided and a little bitter. “Even when my idea of a date is stealing HYDRA blood money and raiding possible HYDRA bunkers?”

“Hey, we went and got pie after that, it was a pretty great date. Only thing that would have made it better was if we’d gotten to blow up a HYDRA bunker.”

Now Natasha laughs, revealing a dimple. She leans close to Sharon on the couch, her head tipped up like she’s waiting for a kiss, and the smell of gunpowder mixing with Natasha’s rich floral perfume is heady in a drugging sort of way, the memory of danger and arousal combining until they’re inextricable from each other.

“And what would make this a pretty great date?” asks Natasha. “Wait, no. Let’s shoot for better than pretty great. What would make this an _amazing_ date?”

“Stay here tonight and find out,” says Sharon, and Natasha’s smile turns merry and delighted.

“Oh, you are _good_ at this,” she says, admiring, and then she kisses Sharon.

It’s a shyer kiss than Sharon would have expected from Natasha, hesitant and wary for long seconds until Sharon’s intent enthusiasm spurs Natasha on to match her. As if she’d just been waiting for permission,  all the testing, light pressure of Natasha’s soft, full lips disappears, and they’re full on making out instead of just kissing. It’s messy and rushed and wet, and after months of wanting and flirting, it feels like the vicious, giddy high of winning a fight. Sharon remembers her own half-formed fantasies of this, how she hadn’t dared to hope for romance. Maybe this isn’t exactly Bucky and Steve’s epic reunion kiss, but it is a kiss full of months of wanting, and that makes it perfect.

Maybe there’s something to be said for delayed gratification, thinks Sharon dizzily, gasping for breath between kisses. Sharon can’t stop her hands from roaming, moving from Natasha’s petal-soft cheeks to her shoulders and waist, to her hair, and to her warm neck where she can feel Natasha’s pulse flutter and pound.

Sharon’s hungry enough for this that her kisses get rough, and the low, needy noises Natasha makes only encourage her. Natasha’s hands grip Sharon’s hips firmly, and she pulls Sharon closer, until she’s practically in Natasha’s lap.

“God, why weren’t we doing this before,” demands Sharon between kisses.

“Sorry, sorry, I was—sort of operating under the impression that I should do the exact opposite of the—you know—seduction, honey pot playbook, so—” She kisses her way along Sharon’s jaw down to her neck and leaves her gasping and her skin burning. “I decided to take it slow.”

Sharon groans. “That’s really sweet, but oh my god, we should have been making out weeks ago, _months_ ago—”

She straddles Natasha to drive the point home, and this gives her improved access to Natasha’s mouth and hair, and wow, a truly excellent view of Natasha’s breasts. Natasha looks up at her with heavy-lidded eyes, her lush mouth now rose red.

“Yeah. Yeah, we really should have,” she says, and pulls Sharon down for another kiss.

Natasha’s very into kissing, apparently. Sharon’s not at all opposed. They kiss and touch for a meltingly long time, and it’s like the day’s sunshine has been preserved in and between them in a steady, glowing warmth. They stretch out on the couch, Natasha spread out under her like something out of a painting, her clothes in sweet disarray. They’d both dressed for a hike, comfort and protection more important than how good they looked, but it doesn’t matter now: Natasha looks just as good in this flannel shirt and jeans as she did in that stunning blue dress on that first double date. Said flannel button-down is open now, revealing her tight undershirt and some very inviting curves. When Sharon finds herself rocking against Natasha’s strong thigh, in time to the throbbing of her cunt, she figures it’s time to move things to the bedroom.

“Come to bed with me?” Sharon asks.

Natasha’s smile is sly and wicked, her eyes sparkling and her skin flushed down to her breasts, and this, Sharon thinks, is surely the most beautiful Natasha has ever looked.

“Oh, I don’t know, taking it slow went okay, maybe I shouldn’t put out on the first date—”

“This is like our _tenth date_ , oh my god—”

* * *

They stumble to Sharon’s bedroom, keeping some skin on skin contact the whole way there: hands on hips or twined together, and quick, nipping little kisses. Once they’re in sight of the bed, they start shedding clothing and hidden weapons holsters, sheathed knives and guns they take care to set down properly so as to avoid shooting themselves. Dismay briefly spikes in Sharon when she remembers that she’s wearing an unsexy, practical sports bra instead of anything nicer. The dismay dissolves when Natasha takes off her undershirt and reveals a practical sports bra of her own, which still looks plenty sexy, especially with the way her nipples are peaking even through the thick fabric.

Natasha must mistake her attention for something more judgey than it is, because runs a nervous hand through her thoroughly mussed hair. “Yeah, I have to admit, I hadn’t planned for this part so much,” she says. “Otherwise, I’d have—”

“Obviously I didn’t either. And oh my god, it’s fine, it’s more than fine, you look gorgeous, come here—” Sharon says and reels Natasha in for a kiss, and for the opportunity to get her hands on all that newly revealed skin. Natasha hums happily, almost a moan, then pushes Sharon onto the bed.

“C’mon, get these off,” Natasha rasps, their hands colliding when they both reach for each others’ jean buttons and zippers.

There’s some undignified and effortful wriggling around when they both try to get out of their lamentably skinny jeans, and Sharon can’t help but burst out laughing even though the friction from their attempts to get out of these damned jeans is just making her desperate, which sets Natasha off too.

“Stop, or I’m never going to get out of these,” gasps Natasha through her laughter, but they do both manage it eventually.

Sharon kicks her dumb jeans away with some force before helping Natasha to finish tugging hers off too, and by then they’re both breathless, chests heaving from their laughter and their rush to unclothe.   Natasha takes the opportunity to straddle her, and Sharon arches up against her helplessly, the sheer want throbbing in her clit zinging up and down her spine in an electric, tingling rush.

“Look at you,” says Natasha, her eyes zeroing in on Sharon’s underwear, which are as plain as her bra, but soaked through from how wet she is. “I was going to ask if you had any lube, but I’m guessing you don’t need it.”

“No,” says Sharon, and reaches for Natasha’s bra, and then there’s another round of breathless clothes removal until they toss their underwear aside and their breasts are free of their dumb, practical but restrictive sports bras.

Sharon feels more or less neutral about her own breasts; they’re fine, a pleasant handful, small enough that she can get away with going braless, but not particularly remarkable. But god, Natasha’s breasts. Natasha’s breasts are full and heavy, the nipples big and dusky pink. When she brushes her thumbs over them, Natasha gasps and moans, and rolls her hips against Sharon’s.

Before she can fully explore that response, Natasha’s tugging down Sharon’s underwear and Sharon’s kicking it off and then Natasha’s fingers slide into her so abruptly and so smoothly that Sharon cries out.

“Okay?” asks Natasha, and Sharon nods drunkenly.

“More,” she demands, already bearing down and thrusting against Natasha’s fingers. “Come on, more.”

Natasha gives her more, pushing her fingers in deep and rough, until her thumb finds Sharon’s clit and presses lightly against it. Sharon bucks and moans as Natasha tests and teases her clit, trying light pressure, then hard, then circling around and around. When Sharon manages to open her eyes and focus on Natasha, the expression on Natasha’s face is alight with sweet, wicked intent. Sharon’s too far gone to care much about the staccato, sharp moans coming out of her mouth. Her orgasm is building with every swipe of Natasha’s thumb, a steady and consuming winding up that’s edging so tantalizingly close to the rush of release that it’s the best kind of unbearable.

Then Natasha, in what is clearly either some form of magic or mind reading or _something_ , presses down with the exact right pressure at the exact right time, just before Sharon was about to beg her, and Sharon comes so hard she’s still shaking afterwards.

“That,” Natasha declares, sitting back on her heels above Sharon, “was a lot of fun.”

Sharon laughs giddily. “Yeah it was.” She gets her loose, relaxed muscles to cooperate and flips them so that she’s on top of Natasha, settling down heavily over her to kiss her. “How do you want it?”

Natasha kisses her again, deep and dirty, and Sharon think she knows how Natasha wants it.

“Your mouth,” she says, her face flushing even more, and in answer, Sharon slides down Natasha’s body, kissing her breasts and stomach along the way. And, okay, Sharon spends some time with Natasha’s breasts and nipples, because wow. Natasha’s response is gratifying.

“Have you ever come just from having your nipples played with?” wonders Sharon. “They’re really great nipples.”

Natasha laughs and moans as Sharon mouths at them. “Thank you, but fuck, can you eat me out already, I’m dying here—”

“Hmm, alright, we’ll put a pin in that,” says Sharon and hitches Natasha’s legs up for easier access to her cunt.

Natasha has a neatly trimmed thatch of auburn hair that’s glistening from how wet she is, which is enormously gratifying, so Sharon doesn’t waste time, she just parts Natasha’s labia and dives in. It’s been too long since she’s done this, but after a few exploratory sort of swipes with her tongue, she thinks she’s got the rhythm of it again. Natasha is hot and wet against her mouth, the taste and smell of her filling Sharon’s world, so much smooth and hot softness, the most intimate way to touch someone. It’s Sharon’s favorite thing about this, next to making her partner—making _Natasha_ —make those soft and desperate sounds, feeling every responsive flutter and the tensing of her thighs. It’s equal parts vulnerability and power, and to have that from Natasha of all people, Natasha who guards herself so well and asks for so little—that makes Sharon feel equal parts wild and tender.

When Natasha grips Sharon’s hair, just on the right side of pain, Sharon moans right against Natasha’s swollen clit and Natasha’s hips jerk.

“Can you—with your fingers—” gasps Natasha, and Sharon grips Natasha’s hip tight with one hand, and slides two fingers inside her.

There are women Sharon is gentle with, and women Sharon is fast with, but Natasha—she thinks Natasha is the kind of woman who wants it rougher, hard enough to feel it thunder through her. And maybe Sharon wants Natasha to know how much she’s wanted this, how hard. So she sets a pace just short of brutal, and sucks and licks hard at Natasha’s clit.

“That’s perfect, you’re perfect, keep doing that—” orders Natasha, almost sobbing, so Sharon does, until Natasha cries out, long and loud, and clenches around her fingers.

Sharon gives her a few gentle parting strokes with her tongue, just to feel her shiver, then raises her head with what’s probably an enormously smug smile.

Natasha’s stretching out loose and satisfied above her, her face beautifully soft and slack with pleasure.

“Alright?” asks Sharon, and Natasha lets out a throaty, satisfied hum that’s awfully close to a purr.

“Amazing, thank you. Come up here.”

“Are you a cuddler?” asks Sharon, charmed, and slings an arm around her waist.

They’ve worked up a bit of a sweat by now, and the cool air raises goosebumps on Sharon’s skin. They work the bed’s covers loose and slide under them, and Natasha slides close in answer.

“I don’t know,” says Natasha, thoughtfully. “I’m feeling pretty cuddly right now, I guess. I’m not sure if that will be a regular thing.” She turns her head to face Natasha, a self-deprecating quirk to her lips. “I told you, I’m not used to doing this when I mean it. As—just me. Whoever that is, I guess.”

Sharon smooths a hand over Natasha’s thoroughly wild hair, and smiles at her. “We can test it out. If you’re up for, uh, doing this again some time.”

“I am definitely up for doing this again some time. Like, maybe even later tonight.”

“Yeah?” asks Sharon with a smile that’s growing wide enough to hurt her cheeks.

“Yeah,” says Natasha softly. Then she darts in for a quick peck on Sharon’s lips and says, “But first, I think we should have some ice cream and booze. I’m pretty into that tradition now.”

“It’s a tradition, huh?”

“Yup. More than three times makes it a tradition.”

“I won’t argue with that.”

* * *

The next morning, Sharon texts Bucky.

_Action item 4 complete._

He immediately texts back an avalanche of congratulatory emoji, and Sharon hides her giddy laughter in her pillow.

“Don’t tell me all that buzzing is because you’re being called in for some emergency,” says Natasha as she comes back in the bedroom, carrying two mugs of coffee.

Sharon nearly sighs at the sight of her, and not because she’s bearing caffeine. No, it’s that she looks unbearably sexy and cute in her bra, flannel shirt, and underwear.

“No, just some texts,” Sharon says, and accepts the warm mug with a kiss and a smile.

“Don’t tell me the old men are taking credit for this.”

“Nah, just offering congratulations. And really, Bucky wasn’t bad as a wingman.”

Natasha snorts. “I think you got the better end of the deal. Steve is about as good at being a wingman as he is at going undercover.”

“Harsh, but fair,” says Sharon with a grin.

An idea sparks in Sharon’s brain, but before she can catch it, Natasha sets her coffee down, and takes Sharon’s mug and sets it aside too.

“Good morning, by the way,” Natasha says, and wraps her arms around Sharon’s neck. Sharon slides her hands down Natasha’s back and cups her ass, making Natasha release a small gasp.

“It could be better, right?” Sharon asks, and is answered by Natasha’s deep and hungry kiss.

After that, Sharon’s willing to re-categorize it as the _best_ morning, and it only gets better from there.

* * *

After she and Natasha have been officially dating for two weeks, the idea that had only barely formed that first morning after grows into a full-fledged plan, and Sharon texts Bucky, _It’s my turn to pick a double date_. She sends him a time and location for dinner at a local restaurant, along with an order to wear suits, and then she fills Natasha in on the plan during one of their own more low-key netflix and chill dates.

Once Sharon lays out the plan, Natasha just raises her eyebrows and laughs. “Murder mystery dinner theater? Was the escape room that bad?”

“No, but it’s the principle of the thing! All those secret, surprise double dates. And you said Steve was a subpar wingman. I want to get some payback, subject Steve and Bucky to some of the same date night awkwardness they put us through.”

“And?” prompts Natasha, pulling her head down for a quick kiss.

“And it looks fun,” admits Sharon. Kind of dumb, yeah, but fun, plus it gives them an opportunity to dress up and solve a crime when the stakes are nonexistent. After a couple of weeks of hunting down HYDRA moles who are just as likely to take out their coworkers as they are to bite on a cyanide pill, the idea of a clean, easy solve, even if it is fake, is pretty appealing to Sharon. “Do you _not_ think it looks fun? We could do something else—”

“No, it does look fun,” says Natasha with a few comforting strokes to Sharon’s hair. “Are we dressing up?”

The murder mystery is 20s themed, so that means flappers and bootleggers and an opportunity to show up wearing a skimpy flapper dress while Steve and Bucky gape and wonder if they’d missed the memo about it being a costume party. Hell yeah Sharon wants to dress up. Also, she maybe already has a flapper dress lurking in the back of her closet, from when she’d gone to a 20s themed dance night in college. She wonders, idly, if she’ll get the opportunity to show off her Charleston.

So Sharon says, “Imagine the looks on Steve and Bucky’s faces if we show up looking like we walked out of the 1920s.”

Natasha smirks and nods decisively. “Yeah, we’re dressing up,” she says, then she leans in to murmur into Sharon’s ear. “I wanna see you in those garters and stockings flappers used to wear.”

Yeah, this is definitely a good idea, thinks Sharon as she pushes Natasha down on the couch for the _chill_ portion of this evening’s netflix and chill.

* * *

When they meet in front of the restaurant, decked out in their sparkling flapper wear and complete with fascinators, Steve’s eyes go wide and his mouth goes slack in a gratifying expression of gobsmacked confusion. Bucky, on the other hand, isn’t nearly as thrown; he just narrows his eyes and cocks his head.

“Look at you two, all dolled up,” he says.

“It’s not…Halloween?” tries Steve. The gears are very obviously turning so damned fast in his pretty little head.

“Nope,” says Sharon, and does not explain further. She can feel Natasha’s body beside her tremble with a suppressed laugh. “C’mon, we’ve got to get to our table by 7:30.”

When they walk in, Bucky takes in the restaurant’s costumed patrons and staff, and the brassy jazz band playing in the corner, and barks out an incredulous laugh.

“Are people nostalgic for speakeasies? Speakeasies were not like this.”

Before he or Steve can regale them with tales of the good old days, or what speakeasies were actually like, a couple of the murder mystery dinner theater actors accost them, and Steve’s confusion only deepens as the actors exposit at them. The actors lay out the scenario: speakeasy, jazz, some mobsters here for business and some bright young things here to drink and do the Charleston, which of them are you, hope there’s no trouble tonight,  _ wink wink nudge nudge _ , etc.  

One of the actors, a heavily made up woman in a fetching blood-red flapper dress, decides to indulge in some flirting and some improv, and squeezes Steve’s biceps.

“A fine bimbo like yourself, you gotta be one of Fat Tony’s guys!”

“Oh definitely,” says Natasha, and steps up to take a hold of Steve’s other arm, possibly to keep him from escaping, so Sharon and Bucky drop back to watch the awkward scene unfold.

“This is your revenge for the escape room, isn’t it?” murmurs Bucky to her, and Sharon grins and shrugs.

“Maybe. Just thought it’d be fun. Don’t tell me you’re gonna be a bluenose about it,” she says, and Bucky throws his head back and laughs hard enough that his nose scrunches up.

The sound catches Steve and Natasha’s attention and they half turn, Steve already smiling in a dazed and wondering kind of way. A fluttering thrill that’s nearly strong enough to make Sharon take flight rushes up and down her spine when she realizes Natasha is giving her a pretty similar look. She and Bucky smile back at them, probably with matching blushes and besotted looks, before they recover their wits.

“Nah, me?” Bucky tells Sharon. “It’s all jake, so far as I’m concerned.”

She doesn’t know if his accent deepening is on purpose or not, but it’s delightful anyway.

Natasha thinks so too apparently, because she teases him, “Look at you sounding all Brooklyn.”

By now, Steve has relaxed and caught on somewhat, and his confusion has faded to amusement. “Alright, which of you knows your onions? This some kind of costume party or show?” he asks, and his Brooklyn accent has made a reappearance too. Either he’s leaning into his character with admirable rapidity, or he’s regressing. Either way, hearing him sound like some newsie out of an old movie makes this whole outing worth it already.

“Now you’re on the trolley,” says Natasha with a wink as she releases Steve and takes Sharon’s arm again. Sharon beams at her. Trust Natasha to commit to a cover, even a murder mystery dinner theater cover.   

“We got some real darb folks here, I see!” says another actor/waiter, smiling wide and only very slightly strained as he hands them some programs and menus and directs them to their table. “Enjoy your meal, guys and dolls!”

“This is definitely worse than the escape room, holy shit,” says Bucky with glee as he reads the program. Steve’s looking distinctly pained now.

“You guys know a lot of speakeasies were mob joints, right? Jesus, the things you all have nostalgia for nowadays: ships that tragically sank, criminal enterprises…”

“Shut it, you fire extinguisher,” says Bucky, still reading avidly through the program.

Bucky’s glee only deepens as the night goes on, and Sharon’s right there with him. Meanwhile Natasha’s decided to go full Method and has, apparently, constructed an entire flapper identity by the end of the first course, and she sticks to it unwaveringly, no matter how much Steve winces and groans about her historical inaccuracies and creative use of 20s slang.

“Ain’t this dinner a whole lot of whoopee?”

“Natasha, I don’t know what you think that means but—”

“Aww, don’t listen to him, doll, this dinner’s the elephant’s ears, alright,” says Bucky.

“Uh huh, the real ape’s japes,” adds Sharon, which makes Bucky snort.

“Stop, I’m begging you,” says Steve miserably.

“The giraffe’s calves!” says Natasha, and that earns her the Captain America Is Disappointed in You face. Natasha just grins brightly at him.

When the murder mystery dinner theater’s titular “murder” happens at the end of the main course (after a convenient blackout, naturally), it doesn’t take a genius to figure out whodunnit. Between the information in the program, the most over the top acting Sharon’s seen since she went to her cousin’s high school play, and the not subtle enough cues passed back and forth between the actors, it’s clear that it was the bartender who knifed the aforementioned Fat Tony, because the bartender’s having a doomed affair with the jazz singer caught in Fat Tony’s clutches. It’s so easy, in fact, that Natasha takes it upon herself to up the mystery’s difficulty level by indulging in some improv of her own.

Sharon knows these actors are technically an improv troupe, but they really ought to know better than to allow any unscripted audience participation.

When the “detective” asks Steve questions, he only just manages to elicit wooden, one-word answers from Steve. The “detective” gives Steve a chiding look, but is probably used to this sort of lacklustre performance from guests, so he moves the plot along.

Then the “detective” makes the mistake of “questioning” Natasha.

“Now ma’am, I know tonight has been a trying time, but do you think—”

“I did it, Detective!” exclaims Natasha.

“Uh—”

“It was me who killed Fat Tony!”

Sharon figures she ought to back her girlfriend up at this point. “Baby, no, don’t tell the fuzz nothing!” she says, throwing her arms around Natasha’s shoulders.

Bucky decides to throw in too, which makes Steve sink down into his seat like he wants to disappear.

“But I saw the waiter hiding a steak knife in his apron!” Bucky says, and points to the culprit.

Chaos erupts at that point. A couple other patrons decide that no,  _ they _ want to be the murderers, some others decide to give this improv thing a try, and yet more do some finger-pointing of their own, and from there, the murder mystery dinner theater troupe pretty decisively lose control of the room. Natasha leans back, surveys her work, and takes a satisfied sip of her wine.

“This is fun,” she remarks mildly, her eyes twinkling at Sharon. Sharon only barely manages not to jump and spill her wine when she feels Natasha’s small foot caressing her calf under the table.

“It is,” confirms Sharon, ignoring Steve’s emphatic “No it is not! This is a literal nightmare!”

“Wanna blow this popsicle stand and have dessert at my place?” asks Natasha, as her foot travels upward towards Sharon’s inner thigh.

Sharon shivers, and reaches out to take Natasha’s hand across the dinner table as Steve puts his head in his hands and moans, “No one said that in the 20s!” Bucky just shushes him and pats him on the shoulder.

“Yeah, okay,” says Sharon, because as fun as this is, Sharon’s got a lot of significantly more fun ideas revolving around both of them stripping down to their bras, garters, and stockings. She gets up from the table and tugs Natasha up with her.

“You’re all the worst,” declares Steve, crossing his arms in a sulk. “I’m hanging out with just Sam from now on, no more double dates ever.”

Bucky just toasts them. “Have fun with Action Item 4!”

As she and Natasha leave the restaurant, hand in hand, giddy and giggling, Sharon remembers that first text conversation she had with Natasha about dating, how they’d both admitted that dating felt fake to them, just another kind of cover. Now Sharon knows: you can have both the cover—the thrill of trying on personas and doing new things, the rush of split-second decisions that could go horribly wrong or wonderfully right—and the truth behind it. 

You can have both the work and the joy of someone to share it with.

“I liked your cover in there,” Sharon tells Natasha once they’re in her Camaro.

Natasha winks at her and starts the car. “Thanks for backing me up.”

“Any time. But you know, next time you want to pretend to murder someone, tell me and I’ll add some believable verisimilitude.”

Natasha throws her head back and laughs, then sends Sharon a bright and searing look as she revs the throaty engine.

“Oh, we are  _ definitely _ doing this again,” promises Natasha, and that small, tender and hungry flame Sharon has nursed for Natasha for months flares into a bright conflagration.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> princessoftheworlds made a [gorgeous and perfect edit](https://princess-of-the-worlds.tumblr.com/post/180131261594/niks-fic-recs-fight-like-girls-for-our-place-at) for this fic, go check it out and reblog! :D


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